Methamphetamine arrests are on the rise in the Golden Triangle.
In fact, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office’s narcotics unit is seeing meth on the street daily, according to Capt. Archie Williams, the unit’s commander. Since Sept. 1, LCSO and Columbus Police Department have arrested a combined 19 suspects for possession of meth, some with intent to distribute.
Where agents used to see cocaine, marijuana and “dirty meth” — the sandy-colored home-manufactured methamphetamines — they now see ice, the pure form of methamphetamines, Williams said. And it’s being trafficked into the area from outside the state.
The same is happening in Clay County, according to Clay Sheriff Eddie Scott.
“There’s been a major increase in it,” Scott said. “Within the last year, we’re actually seeing more methamphetamines than we are cocaine.”
Manufacturing nearly non-existent
Meth manufacturing was a problem in the Golden Triangle and the state until 2010 when the Mississippi Legislature banned the sale of pseudoephedrine without a prescription. Pseudoephedrine is the main ingredient in methamphetamines.
“The manufacturing went to nothing after that,” Scott said. “What dope they could make didn’t have (any) quality to it. Most of your ice now is coming out of super labs out of Mexico, funneling through Texas, Arizona.”
The same goes for the state as a whole. Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics reported 479 clandestine methamphetamine labs in the state in 2010, 314 of which were operational. The following year, the number plummeted to 254, with only 99 operational.
MBN has reported 12 labs so far this year. Only one was operational.
The law was never intended to get rid of methamphetamine sales or usage, said Sam Owens, executive director of MBN. Instead, it was intended to decrease the risks of fires, explosions, dangerous chemicals and other hazards from meth manufacturers’ labs.
“It has virtually stopped that,” Owens said. “We rarely come across (operational labs).”
MBN Methamphetamine Coordinator Eddie Hawkins said banning the sale of pseudoephedrine without a prescription is the most effective law he had ever seen.
“I’m very proud that we have passed this legislation to combat the meth problem that we have here because our guys were working three and four meth labs a night at one time,” he said. “And we were charging people that were users. We were dealing with the problem form the wrong end. We needed to cut the head of the snake off by going after the traffickers.”
Trafficking from Mexico
But the drop in local manufacturing hasn’t affected cartels that traffic the drug into the state from Mexico and western states. In the last year or so, law enforcement agencies all over the Golden Triangle have seen increases in arrests for possession and distribution of methamphetamine.
“Basically what happened is they cranked up the super labs in Mexico and just started pumping more in here,” Scott said.
And that increase is not just relegated to the Golden Triangle, Owens said. Over the last four or five years, methamphetamines have overtaken cocaine as the most common drug in Mississippi, though Owens said he still thinks cocaine and prescription drugs are the bigger health risk due to the risk of overdosing.
Golden Triangle law enforcement officers find users with anywhere from one gram to an eight ball, or 3.5 grams, Williams said. Anything more than .1 grams constitutes a felony possession charge.
“It’s not uncommon for us now to seize a pound of meth,” Scott added.
Distribution arrests are not quite as common and take a little more time, Williams said. Investigators have to gather plenty of evidence and obtain warrants to make sure authorities are able to take down an entire operation.
But they’re there, Williams said. Where you have users, you have dealers.
And consumers like the ice even more than they liked the homemade drug, Owens said.
This is because the ice is a purer form of the drug than the homemade “dirty meth,” which was made basically by throwing ingredients into a bottle, said Capt. Brent Swan with the CPD Criminal Investigations Division.
“[Ice has] got more potent effects for a shorter time than the homegrown,” he said.
And while methamphetamine overdoses are not as common as overdoses on cocaine, it’s still so addictive that users can’t kick the habit unless they get some kind of rehab, Swan said.
CPD focuses on preventing people from becoming addicted in the first place.
“Our … focus is to educate young people, teenagers, to absolutely stay away from it,” he said.
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