Number of ‘mom-and-pop’ meth labs declining

By Martha Irvine

updated 12:56 p.m. ET April 2, 2007

At one Minneapolis-area high school, the methamphetamine problem got so bad in recent years that staff members sometimes caught students trying to attend class while high.

But this year’s been notably different, says Deborah Mosby, a high-school drug counselor in Spring Lake Park, Minn.

It’s a positive sign in a state that is one of many hard hit by the meth epidemic — and one of several early indications that a drug that’s long been a scourge is losing its grip, at least in some communities.

Last year, federal officials and many states reported that the numbers of small “mom-and-pop” methamphetamine labs were dropping, a result largely attributed to the crackdown on the sale of pseudoephedrine and similar cold medicine ingredients used to make meth.

Officials feared that methamphetamine from Mexico would simply fill the void. And while authorities in some places have noticed an uptick in imported meth, others are hopeful that meth use is starting to wane.

Some examples:

• In Minnesota’s Twin Cities, meth-related emergency room visits dropped from 1,402 in 2005 to 251 in 2006, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Hazelden Foundation.
• In Montana, a new report from that state’s attorney general noted that meth-related crime fell 53 percent in 2006, compared with the previous year. They also found that, while meth remains a big problem there, the overall rate of employees in Montana who tested positive for meth was down more than 70 percent from 2005 to last year.
• In the San Francisco Bay area, meth-related emergency room visits leveled off in 2006, after peaking the previous two years. Decline in meth use has been particularly notable among gay men, following efforts in their community to spread the word about the drug’s ill effects, says John Newmeyer, who heads San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics.

In addition to causing paranoid, aggressive behavior, meth is known for its harsh physical effects — from sunken eyes and bone-thin frames to teeth that turn gray and deteriorate.

Newmeyer believes such effects have helped change attitudes about meth for “probably the same reasons we saw the decline 10 years ago with African-Americans and crack cocaine.”

“It just became not the thing to do,” says Newmeyer, who tracks his region’s drug numbers for the federal government.

A growing problem
The news isn’t good everywhere — especially on the East Coast, where meth became a problem more recently.

INTERACTIVE A look at how heroin, cocaine and other drugs affect the body

South Florida has, for instance, continued to see a steady increase in meth-related deaths, from 77 in 2003 to 115 last year. It’s also more of an urban problem than a rural one, with much of the meth coming from Mexico by way of Atlanta, says Jim Hall, executive director of the Up Front Drug Information Center in Miami.

Others have noted surges in use in the Hispanic community — and also the advent of strawberry and other flavored meth, aimed at renewing interest in the drug.

Still, for much of the country, researchers say it appears this latest meth epidemic reached its peak in 2004 and 2005.

Data from the federal government shows that the number of first-time meth users has steadily declined in recent years.

And Quest Diagnostics Inc. — a New Jersey company that maintains a national drug testing index based on millions of tests each year — found that 16 out of every 10,000 drug tests in the general workforce came back positive for meth in 2006. That compares with 26 in 2005 and 33 the year before that.

While they still remain above the national average for overall positive tests for the amphetamine class of drugs, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Hawaii and Georgia saw the biggest drops in those positive tests, says Quest researcher Barry Sample.

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