Methamphetamine: More Than Just A Drug
Methamphetamine, like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, causes harm to more than just the user. However, methamphetamine is unique in the extent to which the manufacturing process itself causes harm to neighbors, the environment, property values, and tragically, to innocent victims such as young children.
Environmental damage
Methamphetamine is fundamentally an adulterated mixture of pharmaceutical extracts with poisonous materials. The ingredients in methamphetamine are found in over-the-counter cold medicines and diet pills, household products like lithium camera batteries, matches, tincture of iodine, and hydrogen peroxide. Flammable household products, including charcoal lighter fluid, gasoline, kerosene, paint thinner, rubbing alcohol, and mineral spirits, are often used in the production process. Corrosive products, such as muriatic acid, sulfuric (battery) acid, and sodium hydroxide from lye-based drain cleaners, also may be used. In rural areas where anhydrous ammonia is used as a fertilizer, farmers are increasingly finding their ammonia tanks have been tapped by "cooks" using this highly toxic chemical to produce methamphetamine. These chemicals are not only flammable and corrosive—they are poison. Any property owner whose rental has been converted into a toxic methamphetamine lab knows of the long, expensive process required to make the location safe and habitable again. Because the cost is many thousands of dollars, buildings may actually have to be razed and rebuilt after a methamphetamine lab has been discovered. Some 15% of methamphetamine labs in this country are discovered as the result of an explosion or fire at the lab—a further risk to nearby innocent property owners.
Chemicals Used in Methamphetamine Production
Associated Criminal Activity
Additionally, law enforcement in this country has identified a trend associated with the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine: in areas where methamphetamine manufacturing is increasing, so also are car thefts, forgeries, and especially identity theft incidents. Law enforcement in these areas report that this correlation appears to exist with more frequency than with cocaine, heroin or marijuana use or trafficking.
Methamphetamine: Innocent Victims
Recently, the Department of Justice published an important report regarding children who have been raised in homes where methamphetamine labs were discovered. The results, while preliminary, are disturbing. Along with an increase in methamphetamine labs was an increase in children found present at the lab sites—most of whom resided at the residence where the lab was found. The inherent dangers to children being raised at or near a methamphetamine lab are severe: inhalation or ingestion of toxic substances including methamphetamine, accidental injection or prick by discarded needles or other paraphernalia; and severe illness after the ingestion of chemicals. Further, children at methamphetamine labs are more likely to be physically and sexually abused by members of their own family and other individuals at the site. While withdrawing from a methamphetamine high, some parents fall into a deep sleep for days, during which time their children suffer from neglect, chemical exposure, hunger, and further abuse by other methamphetamine-using individuals. And in some cases, children have died as a direct result of exposure to the toxicity of a methamphetamine lab.
Number of Children Involved in Meth Lab-Related Incidents, United States
(El Paso Intelligence Center–U.S. Department of Justice)
