Mother Nature’s Meth Mouth

When a methamphetamine laboratory is busted, DEA agents don hazmat suits and oxygen masks, protecting themselves against a host of extremely toxic substances with a thick barrier of tough plastic. But unwitting future occupants of these homes, hotel rooms and apartment complexes aren’t so lucky, and neither are the rest of us when the chemicals leak from equipment discarded in landfills around the country.

Meth is known as one of the world’s most destructive drugs. Its effects on the users’ bodies are so dramatic, so startling, that before-and-after photos are the main tool used to keep the public from ever trying it in the first place. A website called Faces of Meth shows one stomach-turning transformation after another, documenting extreme weight loss, skin sores and dental deterioration. What it doesn’t show are the psychological effects, which can include psychotic behavior, hallucinations, insomnia, confusion, delusion and paranoia.

However they came to be meth users, at least these people were volunteers. The same can’t be said for other victims, including property owners and residents who only learn of their homes’ secret pasts as meth labs once they’ve noticed a serious deterioration in their own health and that of their families.

Ether, paint thinner, freon and acetone. Ammonia, battery acid and brake cleaner. Explosives, heavy metals, iodine crystals and phosphorous… all of these common ingredients used to make methamphetamine permeate drywall, carpets, insulation, countertops and air ducts, causing health problems long after the labs have been dismantled. Cooking meth just one time contaminates a building enough to cause health problems.

The New York Times recently delved into the horrors faced by people who move into meth-contaminated homes. Newlyweds Jason and Rhonda Holt, who started their family in a Tennessee home they purchased soon after getting married, couldn’t understand why their children were so weak and pale, with breathing problems that required respirators and frequent trips to the emergency room. And it wasn’t just the kids. Rhonda, a nurse, started experiencing crippling migraines and her husband, a factory worker, developed kidney problems.

For five years they lived in that house without knowing that the previous occupant, who had been dragged from the attic by police, had used the home as a meth lab. With that discovery came another big shock: it was up to them to clean it up, to the tune of at least $30,000. Some would call the Holt family lucky, considering that cleanup can cost up to $100,000 and sometimes, contamination is so bad that the entire structure must be demolished.

Another occupant of a former meth lab, Francisca Rodriquez, had her home tested after her dog began having seizures and her son developed respiratory problems. The home was so contaminated that it couldn’t be cleaned, and the Rodriquez family had to let it go into foreclosure. The former owner had checked ‘no’ on a disclosure form asking whether the house had ever been in a meth lab, but the family had no recourse because he’s already in prison for meth-related offenses.

“It makes you crazy,” Rodriguez told The New York Times. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”

Almost all states with laws requiring meth contamination cleanup hold the property owners financially responsible once contamination is discovered, and only one – Colorado – helps innocent property owners with the costs. Though the EPA was ordered to publish national cleanup standards by the end of 2008, the agency is still reviewing a draft version.

Once known as “poor man’s cocaine”, meth use was once mostly relegated to the West Coast and Southern states, but has now spread across the country like wildfire. More than 12 million Americans have tried it and 1.5 million are regular users according to 2005 federal estimates.

All fifty states have had meth lab busts, with the highest number found in Missouri – though it’s unclear whether the state has more labs and users, or more enforcement. A number of cities have been called “the meth capital of America”, from Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska to Tulsa, Oklahoma, but statistics don’t show a clear winner of that dubious title.

It’s the sophisticated “superlabs”, mostly located in California, which have the biggest environmental impact. Smaller labs located in homes, apartment complexes, hotels, businesses and even vehicles have a smaller impact, but dumping is still a concern. The three meth ingredients that cause the most damage are ether, acetone and white gasoline.

Topsoil and groundwater, including drinking water wells, are often contaminated when the chemicals are dumped down drains or onto the ground outside homes. There are five pounds of waste for every pound of meth produced, and meth cookers sometimes go to extremes to get rid of it – like dumping it in public places including parks and waterways. Meth cookers moving from one site to another don’t exactly go through the same clean-up process as certified meth lab cleanup crews: they just toss everything in the trash.

And when a meth lab is identified, authorities have no choice but to throw everything last item in the home away. Clothing, wallpaper, photographs, alarm clocks, kitchen appliances – every single possession in the home is tossed into a padlocked bin so residents can’t get to them before they’re taken to the dump.

Some hazardous waste facilities don’t even want to take trash labeled as meth waste because it’s so dangerous. What happens to the waste in these cases isn’t always clear. Local officials are responsible for proper disposal, but when there are no clear national guidelines to adhere to, some of it is bound to end up in places it doesn’t belong.

Unfortunately, law enforcement authorities aren’t able to devote the kind of energy and manpower needed for a successful fight against meth – in large part, because of the fact that they’re too busy busting non-violent marijuana users.

Marijuana has been under siege since President Roosevelt signed the first federal anti-marijuana law 70 years ago, and the Bush administration made it the focus of its ‘war on drugs’, spending billions of dollars on catching and jailing pot smokers and dealers while more dangerous drugs like meth proliferated.

In fact, the argument that methamphetamine should be given priority over marijuana when it comes to law enforcement has an unlikely ally: Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Meth has hit his state hard, and he wrote to the Bush administration in 2005 to request a shift in resources from pot to meth.

“While we agree that any drug use is harmful to users and those around them, the problems associated with marijuana are not comparable to methamphetamine in terms of cost to society. We know that different drugs have different rates of use. Marijuana is a much more popular drug in terms of the number of people who use it,” Grassley wrote. “However, methamphetamine causes much more destruction in a much shorter period of time than marijuana.”

“We believe that reducing drug use is not just about reducing the number of users of a drug, but reducing the overall harm to society caused by the drug.”

Luckily, meth use seems to be declining among at least one large segment of the population – teenagers. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America found in February of 2009 that teen meth use was down 25% from 2005 levels.

That doesn’t mean that meth isn’t still an extremely worrisome problem, both for human health and the environment. However, there’s a glimmer of hope in drug policy changes being made by the Obama Administration. By scaling back the war against legitimate medical marijuana in states like California and Nevada, the DEA may end up with more funds to focus on more important things.

Photos: Faces of Meth, NowPublic, maveric2003

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