From The Drug Front: Meth Is Back

DAYTON - During the past several years, all has been relatively quiet on the meth front.

But in recent months, it appears that local production and consumption of the drug are back on the rise, according to law enforcement officials in Walla Walla and Columbia counties.

"It's coming back," said Columbia County Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Jenkins, who functions as narcotics specialist for the county and is part of a task force for Columbia, Walla Walla and Garfield counties. "We're all concerned about it."

The popularity of the drug, spurred by simpler, more portable cooking methods and by a rise in prices for Mexican meth, comes at a time when continued state funding for a regional, rural meth-fighting program that pays for the task force is in question because of the state's budget crisis.

"It's going to be an uphill battle because we have such a huge deficit," State Representative Terry Nealey (R-Dayton) said.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, when the state led the nation in meth production, drug enforcement agencies here made a concerted effort to shut down the traditional meth labs and prosecute the producers with stiff jail sentences.

But several trends have converged to prompt the return of the drug's production in the Touchet Valley. The old cooks are out of jail and back in business in a stealthier way. The meth from Mexico, called crystal meth or ice, isn't as pure and affordable any more. And cooks are increasingly gravitating to the "one-pot" or "ditch dope" method, which allows them to make meth in the back seat of their car or out in the countryside using small vessels like 2-liter pop bottles.

"Instead of being set up in a trailer, they might have it out on the hills," said Rea Culwell, Columbia County's prosecuting attorney.

Earlier this month, her office charged two women with possession of meth after two different arrests in Dayton.

Shake 'n Bake

Newly elected Walla Walla Sheriff John Turner said in a presentation to the Waitsburg City Council last week that fighting illegal meth production is a "different ball game" these days because it's so much harder to detect.

He came to town as a prelude to his first Sheriff's Roundtable scheduled at the multi- purpose room in Waitsburg Elementary School at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24.

Meth production used to require elaborate labs that took time to put together and disassemble. It required many flammable liquids and hot, boiling chemicals to make. Meth labs were smelly, messy and hard to conceal. As a result, detection and prosecution efforts were successful.

But in essence, law enforcement agencies "taught" the producers what the task force was looking for, so a growing number of them have switched to simpler methods that made their way here from the East Coast, said Gary Bolster, a veteran narcotics specialist with the Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office who heads the tri-county task force.

"They figured out how we found them," Bolster said, referring to several cooks in the Waitsburg and Dayton areas suspected to be cooking and selling meth again as they now get roughly the same price as Mexican or California ice, which fetches $225 for an eight ball (3.5 grams) of meth.

These producers will make a larger number of small batches that take about three hours to cook for their own use, for their friends and for sale to help sustain their own addiction, Bolster said .

All meth ingredients, some new and some old, can be bought over the counter for a new cooking method known as "shake and bake." It uses soda bottles and a combination of lithium strips from batteries, outdoor cooking fuel and fertilizer components or the ingredients from overthe counter cold packs for limb injuries. The cocktail produces a chemical reaction with non-prescription pharmaceuticals that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed.

Though it's possible to carry a "meth" lab in a backpack or in a car, the risks are considerable. If any oxygen is left in the bottle after shaking, it can blow up into a giant fireball. It can explode if you unscrew the cap too fast or if you do not shake the bottle just right.

This is the reason why most producers leave their bottles in the ditch and come back after the batch is done. If the concoction explodes, there are no injuries. If it remains intact, the cook has a new batch of meth that reportedly beats other types of the drug from further south.

Recent changes in state law put Sudafed and other cold medications with those ingredients behind drug store counters, and even though they do not require a prescription, buyers have to sign for their purchases. The way meth producers get around this is by going "smurfing," making long-distance trips to round up the legal ingredients for their illegal use from many different merchants.

Although this "one-pot" method has not been detected by any Touchet Valley law enforcement officers directly, word "on the street" and confiscated drug samples indicate its use in the two counties is on the rise.

Local War On Drugs

In the middle of the decade, state lawmakers recognized the challenge rural law enforcement officials have in fighting meth production, so they began the Rural Meth Pilot Program for 13 counties that account for about 6 percent of the state's population .

Walla Walla and Columbia counties are in one of three regions with Garfield County and have formed the South Eastern Washington Narcotics Team or SENT.

In the past five years, the entire 13-county drug enforcement effort has yielded $420 million worth of illegal drugs, included 3,246 criminal investigations and resulted in more than 2,000 arrests. It has also led to the seizure of 650 guns and $2.1 million in personal property.

The task force here rolled up two meth labs in Columbia County and four in Walla County in late 2008 and early 2009. Similar efforts were successful in Garfield County earlier in the decade, Bolster said.

In 2009, another three individuals were charged with possession of pseudoephedrine with intent to manufacture meth. One of them was an assistant to a lab in Columbia County, and the other two were cooking meth in Oregon. Other individuals from Oregon, where Sudafed and other cold meds are prescription drugs, were charged with violations of buying too much pseudoephedrine in Walla Walla County, and in 2010, after trial, one of them received a 51-month jail sentence.

Last summer, the team - with help of state and federal agencies - seized $11 million worth of marijuana plants and arrested three Mexican nationals on national forest land in the upper Tucannon watershed.

Bolster was a patrol sergeant with already more than a decade of narcotics experience by the mid 2000s when state money began to flow for narcotics work. He then went back to his specialty in 2006 to supervise the Southeast region, which has had specialists in each county until last year when the specialist in Garfield County took another job in Idaho.

" Only because of the whole SENT team have cases been able to be worked in the small communities of Pomeroy, Dayton, Waitsburg and Prescott," Bolster said.

State Budget Woes

So now that meth production and consumption seem to be gaining ground again, members of the task force are deeply concerned that their funding will not be extended after the current monies run out at the end of June.

A new state budget item calls for $3.3 million from the General Fund for the pilot program in the 13 rural counties during the next two years, starting this summer.

Nealey said though he and fellow lawmakers from the region say they support the successful program, continued funding may be a hard sell in Olympia, where legislators face a growing deficit.

"That's going to be tough," Nealey said. "The program has been very successful, but money is so tight."

Bolster and other law enforcement officials said the lack of a drug task force would be a setback in the local war against drugs.

"Finally, we were operating like a real task force because of the number of people available," Bolster said. "Most of the cases in Southeast Washington wouldn't have been possible without the collective help of the whole SENT team. This team would not exist and will not exist in the future without funding. Our communities will suffer from the increase of new drug dealers."

Turner In Town

The 13-county drug enforcement pilot program is among the topics Turner and his new executive staff are expected to address at his first Sheriff's Round Table Thursday evening.

Other topics include a new arrangement for seamless patrol coverage, the creation of a foundation to help fund the county's canine program and gang prevention.

The roundtable will be as much an introduction of the new sheriff's administration as a chance for area residents to bring up their questions and concerns regarding public safety in the community.

In other law enforcement news, Turner said last week that his office now provides 24/7 patrol coverage with some overlap between shift so vital information is shared with the incoming squad for followup. One gang specialist is assigned to each squad.

"Our coverage is going to be better," Turner said.

The new Sheriff also mentioned the formation of the Sheriff's Foundation, a private, independent, citizenbased nonprofit to support community awareness efforts, equipment and a new canine program.

"Currently, there are no K-9s in Walla Walla County," Turner said. "K-9s are a well recognized, very valuable tool which we need here in Walla Walla."

Anyone interested in volunteering or serving as a Sheriff's Foundation Board Member is encouraged to contact the Sheriff's Office at sheriff@co.walla-walla. wa.us

Turner and his team are scheduled to hold a Sheriff's Roundtable in Prescott on Thursday, June 23, at the Prescott High School Multipurpose Room. They return to Waitsburg Sept. 22 and to Prescott Dec. 8 as part of a series of communities meeting in the Touchet Valley, Walla Walla/College Place, Touchet/Lowden and Burbank/ Wallula.