ASSOCIATED PRESS
The number of methamphetamine labs shut down in Virginia this year is more than double the 2003 total, evidence that the manufacture of the highly addictive drug has flourished in rural parts of the state.
Investigators in Washington County on Tuesday found the state’s 75th meth lab of the year, compared to 34 labs found in Virginia in all of 2003, according to figures provided by state and local authorities.
“It’s not uncommon for us to take down one meth lab and find several more that week,” said Virginia State Police Sgt. Mike Conroy.
Authorities say meth, a powerful stimulant also known as crank, is the drug of choice for many counties in Southwest Virginia.
So far this year, authorities have closed 56 labs in Washington, Smyth, Wythe and Pulaski counties — representing about three-quarters of the state’s total meth-lab shutdowns.
Deputies in Washington County discovered three meth labs in one day a week ago and another Tuesday, bringing the county’s total to 18 labs for the year, said sheriff’s Detective C.L. Hazelwood.
Tuesday’s bust came at a Red Carpet Inn, and police evacuated the motel to allow a specially trained team to pull the lab and its chemicals out of a room.
Meth first appeared in the mid-1980s as a drug manufactured by the Hell’s Angels on the West Coast. By the ’90s, new meth recipes emerged that “cooked” the active ingredient in cold medicine with other household chemicals. The recipe has slowly spread across the country, rooting the drug’s appeal in rural areas.
“For every meth lab I take out, in my opinion, there’s 10 more in its place,” Detective Hazelwood said.
A complete meth lab can fit on a kitchen table or in the trunk of a car. The drug is cooked in stages. Groups of meth cooks in Washington County are now banding together to complete each stage at different locations.
Authorities in Virginia point down Interstate 81 to neighboring Tennessee as an omen of what could happen in years to come.
The number of labs busted in Tennessee has risen from 145 in 1999 to 822 last year, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. As of August, the state had seized 1,188 labs in 2004. Tennessee accounts for 75 percent of the meth lab seizures in the Southeast, officials said.
Meth has been traveling into Washington County from Tennessee and North Carolina, Detective Hazelwood said. It also attracts a number of unwelcome visitors — those with a drug habit who want to learn how to cook meth.
“We’re getting a lot of new faces,” he said.
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