AUGUSTA, Maine — The national problem of homemade drug labs, mostly making methamphetamine, is growing in Maine and its cost is hitting law enforcement at all levels of government, including the state Department of Environmental Protection.
“It is very much a concern,” said Roy McKinney, director of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. “This has been a big problem in other areas of the country and we have seen a significant increase in Maine over the last several months.”
In budget year 2011, MDEA had six calls to deal with meth labs in the state. Since November 2011 the agency has tallied 14 drug labs with all but one involving the making of methamphetamine. One lab was making a synthetic version of the powerful psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine.
Five of the labs this year were in Aroostook County: two in Presque Isle, one in Easton, one in Van Buren and one in Connor.
“These homemade labs are very dangerous,” McKinney said. “They use chemicals that when mixed together can cause toxic gas and the process creates heat that can cause fire and explosions.”
He said there have been several instances where the container used to mix the chemicals, often a 2-liter soda bottle, develops a hole from the heat of the chemical reaction and causes a fire.
“We had one where it looked like a flame thrower with flames shooting out the side of it,” McKinney said. “These are dangerous situations.”
He said MDEA has developed an online training program to help local law enforcement recognize potential labs. He said agents are sent immediately when a call comes from local police that they have a possible lab.
“We have trained agents to identify the chemicals and the equipment that might be used,” McKinney said.
He said responding to a report of a drug lab has become one of the highest priorities for his agency because of the danger posed to the general public by the labs. He said a big concern is the cost of responding to a possible lab.
“We had one on a weekend and everybody was on overtime,” McKinney said. “We were using a federal grant to pay for dealing with labs, but that grant ran out on Christmas Day and we are scrambling to find ways to pay for these now.”
The department still has state funds for this work, but the concern is that this money will be exhausted if the number of labs continues to grow.
Public Safety Commissioner John Morris warned lawmakers earlier this year of the growing bills for meth lab investigations. He said the costs are significant and growing.
“Every time we break a meth lab it costs $15,000,” he said, “because of the care we have to take and the hazmat that we have to send in.”
He said the chemicals used to make meth and other designer drugs are very dangerous, some toxic and others explosive. He said it is a growing cost as drug labs have been raided across the state and his costs do not include the expenses of local police and other first responders.
“We often have a fire department standing by at one of these incidents,” McKinney said, “because there is a real danger from even these simple labs we have found so far.”
Barbara Parker, director of response services at the Department of Environmental Protection, said her agency also is facing increased costs because of meth and other drug labs. She said her hazmat teams are trained to deal with a range of toxic and dangerous chemicals, including those used to make illegal drugs.
“Our biggest cost is manpower,” she said. “We send at least two people to every one of these and it can take a long time to assess the situation and clean up the lab site so the police can do their job.”
Parker said there is also a cost for such items as oxygen bottles and disposable suits that vary based on the incident. She said it can cost just a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars for the DEP to do its job at a drug lab site.
“We have been lucky that all of these labs have been small,” she said, “In Washington state they had a railroad car buried in the ground that was being used as a big lab.”
Parker also is concerned about the increasing number of labs and the costs to her division. The response services are funded by a dedicated tax on those Maine companies that produce hazardous materials and she said handling meth labs set up by criminals was not a consideration when the fund was set up.
So legalize it, let it be made in controlled environments with quality standards and this problem will be gone.
You mean leave individuals personally responsible as to what they choose to put into their own bodies? That’s crazy talk :p
You do know how addictive and all-consuming it is, right? That said, no problem! But when you lose your job because of it, spend every last dollar to get it, and then break into my house to steal my stuff so you can get more, your habit will end that night.
Which is exactly what is happening right now,. Why not try a new direction? Get the drugs out on the free market and let competition set the prices rather than it being controlled by the violent, government created black market?
Because most of the druggies you read about everyday are still too useless to work. Where are they going to get their money? The usual method of course….. Crime!
Yeah, but with a free market, their (your) dollar will stretch further.
There is of course the option of making drug use a capital crime. Since they are “useless” maybe they should be trashed?
Please note Derek’s particular words: “the violent, government-created black market” [hyphen added].
I find these to be particularly reasonable words … for a good place to begin.
Because without that, there is no comprehensible topic. Before the legislation, there was no epidemic. As long as the legislation is maintained, the epidemic is maintained.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Keep on doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep on getting what you’re getting.
If you do something different, you could get something different. But
Change is not so profitable to the coroprate puppet-masters – – – who operate the planet’s governments and “law” (police, court, prison, etc.) industries.
That’s sort of my point. I know how terrible this stuff is, which is why I choose not to use it. I also choose not to chain smoke or get blackout drunk every night even though it’s perfectly legal.
To He!! with drugs and drug dealers. I am sick and tired of the legalize crowds Bulls&it. I had a friend overdose and die last week. Drugs destroy lives period. Wage total war against those that produce and sell this poison.
You realize that more people die each year from legal, prescription drugs than from illegal drugs, right? Let’s not even get into alcohol or tobacco. I’m sorry that your friend overdosed on drugs, but assuming that the drugs your friend used were illegal, then I don’t understand how drug laws would have helped him or her. History shows that the war on drugs and prohibition in general claims far more lives than the drugs themselves. Drugs themselves don’t destroy lives. They’re not destroying mine, for example, because I choose not to do them. As an adult, I believe I have the right to make that choice for myself. There’s a reason why the Al Capones of alcohol no longer exist, as well as the question that, since drugs can still be smuggled into maximum security prisons, how can they possibly be kept out of our homes? As principal, though, it’s none of governments business what I choose to put into my body.
Just a question:
Did the drug dealers force the drugs into your friend’s body? Did the drugs get in to his bloodstream accidently?
Lives are destroyed by users, not sellers, and personal responsibility MUST play a part in the behavior which caused the death of which you speak.
It is either a ‘free society” or it is a slave society. There is no inbetween. People should be allowed to make unpopular choices. The alternative is dictatorship.
Legalize crystal meth? Are you utterly insane?
Who owns your body? You or the Government?
unfortunately, the meth will own your body.
Why not? If it were legalized tomorrow, I wouldn’t be any more inclined to use it. I’m assuming that you wouldn’t either.
laughable idea. in your world would welfare pay for it also?
I would vote for that providing that we also aren’t required to help you after your brain is fried. If we could get rid of the tax payer funded rehab centers and leave you on the curb in your own vomit that would be a perfect law.
It would create jobs too. We would need another trash truck and crew to ride around every morning and dispose of the bodies.
ugh
So you do get it then?
86’d
86’d
What, you mean the war on drugs doesn’t pay for itself? Say it isn’t so!
These immature fools who advocate legalizing this dope are incredibly naive. They are quite likely delusional drug users too, geniuses in their dope-crippled minds.
Drugs laws should be enforced at every level and made tougher. For instance, it is Big Pharma that supplies the components to manufacture these drugs, and they are doing this knowingly. They should be prosecuted, and billed for the clean-up -whenever their products are being used for the manufacture of dope.
But back to these kids who are advocating legalizing drugs here on BDN.
You punks think you are so smart, it is laughable. You are ruining your lives, while you wile away your time waiting for the end of your life, which will come sooner rather than later, because dope does that to a fellow -idiots-.
Naive huh? What about the fact that drugs can be attained inside prisons? How about that 40 year war on drugs? Working yet? All the drugs are gone? Let’s talk about the personal attacks, shall we? My mind is not “dope-crippled” since I don’t use drugs. I fail to see how I’m ruining my life while I wile away my time waiting for the end of my life, which, apparently is coming sooner rather than later. Brilliant analysis since none of those things are true about me. I simply believe that we, as adults, have the right to choose what we put into our own bodies. Does that make me weird?
Your lying to your self.
About?
As far as I have read, those talking of legalization are talking about pot, not meth.
And as far as big Pharm being the supplier of the chemicals to make meth, sorry, but wrong again. You can get everthing you need to make this crap at Walmart or any hardware store.
I lived in Oregon for 15 years before moving back here to keep my kids away from meth. Oregon is called the capitol of meth for a reason. All the laws the passed to restrict the sales of the items needed to make meth slowed but did not stop, the making of meth.
Lock up is not what is needed, more education on what this does to you, such as burning out the pleasure centers of you brain and what it is made of, cool things like drain cleaner is what helped Oregon slow the meth in the schools.
Education, not fear, is often a better learning tool
Your “opinion” is yours and you have a right to express it. You do not have the right to judge all opinions which do not conform to yours as “stupid, immature. You also do not have the knowlege to confirm your belief that the oppsoing opinions come from delusional drug users.
In a “free conntry” people should have the right to make decissions which are not popular. They should be allowed to screw up their lives, and make themselves dependent. They should not have the right to conficate tax money to “rehab” themselves.
Drugs should be legal and available to folks who choose the back of the line.
Darwin theorized that “natural selection” would make the human race stronger. Government and do-gooders should get out of the way of the natural order.
True freedom requires equal amounts of freedom and responsibility. If you want to burn yourself out on drugs, that’s your right, just don’t demand help from the taxpayers if you find yourself incapacitated and unable to hold a job. What we have today, with the war on drugs and the welfare state, is a system that (in the case of drug use) punishes the action, but rewards the lifestyle.
The MDEA should also focus on Methadone Clinics. Oh, WAIT….they are making way to much money off them to focus.
Maine DEA, you do wonderful work that many people would not be able to do, it takes a special kind of person to put themselves in that of scenario…both physically and mentally…knowing what could potentially happen to you, as well as what you could be exposed to in the long term…to keep us all safe from the scumbag trash drug dealers…..here’s a thought, most of you meth houses have been in underpopulated areas (Aroostook) county, focus on the ones known in the more dense populated areas and let the others just kill themselves making this crap…..with hope of an explosion of the materials they use will either kill them or harm them for life, that might save some money from you budget for better use, they are going to die anyway, why not let them help themselves along quicker, in the long run it would be better for all of us….
This is horrible. The war on drugs must come to an end, this is madness and it should stop.
War is not the answer. Can’t anyone think of anything other than war?
Unfornately, a lot of the kids on here are still somehow uneducated and unaward of the biological effects of some of these drugs. Laws are created to protect people like you. Meth is a dangerous drug. It is NECESSARY for it to only be handled in controlled environments with professionals who are knowledgeable on the chemicals and ingrediants. To say the government is “controlling us” is idiotic. Do you think half these dealers have the money for the proper equipment and tools to prevent accidents and mishaps? I doubt it.
I don’t see the need to belittle those you disagree with by calling them “kids”. First, we do know (or have a pretty good idea) of what these drugs can do, that’s why we choose not to do them. As far as drug laws being made to protect me, I fail to see how throwing a drug user in prison is really improving his life. I, for one, don’t need mommy and daddy government protecting me from myself. The concept of imprisoning someone in order to protect them is simply astounding. Let’s talk about government “controlling us”. I’d say that government dictating what you can and cannot put into your own body is pretty d@mn controlling, wouldn’t you? If we don’t even own our own bodies, then someone else does. Of course most meth labs lack safety equipment and procedures. Whenever something is illegal, the only people making and selling it are, by definition, criminals. There’s a reason why we don’t have to worry about our store bought alcohol being made in a bathtub in someones dirty basement.