Local meth labs: same danger, just different

Go to myajc.com to see a map showing locations of meth labs or dump sites where materials were discarded from a lab from 2010 - 2012.

In February 2011, three small children were killed when a house containing a working methamphetamine lab in a quiet Lilburn subdivision caught fire.

Now, local authorities say the same type of meth lab that killed the children, a “conversion lab” where liquid meth is turned into a solid, is becoming more common. It’s a threat hidden in the suburban landscape among subdivision homes, apartment complexes and mobile home parks.

Locations for the labs found over the last year run the gamut from a bungalow in Alpharetta to a ranch-style house in Cartersville, from a mobile home in Mableton to an apartment in Sandy Springs, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. They are almost always in residential areas.

» MAP: See Georgia meth lab locations from 2010-12

And as in the Lilburn fire, unsuspecting neighbors probably have no idea they’re living next to a potential powder keg because the flammable chemicals used to purify and speed the evaporation of the liquid meth can cause deadly explosions but don’t generate alarming odors.

“With a conversion lab, it’s just highly flammable,” said John Murphy, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA Atlanta field division.. “You could have a house fully engulfed in a matter of minutes if there was an ignition source.”

The increase in conversion labs is happening because Mexican cartels, which began to dominate the meth market about a decade ago have edged out locally operated, mid-sized “mom and pop” labs that were also notorious for exploding. Mexican conversion labs are in some ways more dangerous because they’re not only combustible, they are capable of producing much larger quantities of the drug.

Seizures of liquid methamphetamine at the United States border with Mexico have risen steadily over the past three years to reach record levels. Recently raided labs have been capable of producing 20 pounds or more of meth per production cycle, which can take a few hours to a few days, Murphy said. That’s enough to get the entire population of Roswell or Sandy Springs high. A typical dose is about a fourth or less of the amount of powder in a Splenda packet.

Mexican meth traffickers, primarily from the Sinaloa and Michoacan cartels, are instead preparing large batches of the drug in their homeland and smuggling it stateside. The meth is dissolved into a liquid such as water or oil before it is transported across the border in fuel tanks, windshield washer reservoirs or tequila bottles, according to a recent report issued by the National Methamphetamine & Pharmaceuticals Initiative.

The liquid is then washed with acetone — a highly flammable liquid — to purify it and allow it to evaporate, leaving the meth residue behind.

Conversion labs are harder to identify than traditional meth labs where the drug is made from scratch, because they don’t give off the toxic odors from combining chemicals like phosphorous, lye and battery acid. The processing agent in conversion labs is simply acetone, a clear-colored solvent that is commonly found in hardware stores and is used by painters to clean their paint brushes, said Phil Price, commander of the Cherokee County Multi-Agency Narcotics squad.

“It’s not a foreign smell,” Price said. “You may smell it and think, ‘well, they’re doing some work next door.’ It doesn’t send off the same kind of alarm bells.”

The Marietta-Cobb-Smyrna Narcotics squad commander, Maj. R. Willard, said conversion labs are just about all that his investigators seem to find anymore these days. In fact, there have been so few traditional meth labs discovered since 2010 in Cobb County that a special team formed to handle clandestine labs there has disbanded.

DEA statistics show that the amount of meth seized in Georgia hovered around 600 pounds between 2009 and 2010. In the following two years, the amount seized more than doubled to 1,519 and 1,399 pounds in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

However, it’s difficult to discern whether the number of meth labs is up or down beyond the anecdotal evidence, because meth lab tracking was thrown off two years ago due to a federal funding flap.

In 2011, the federal grant program for meth cleanups faced sharp budget cuts. As a result, the DEA stopped disbursing funds to the state for meth lab cleanups in Georgia. It only covers those expenses when the DEA has been involved with an investigation, according to Harry S. Sommers, special agent in charge of the DEA Atlanta Field Division.

Facing the loss of federal funds, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in February 2012 implemented a lab waste removal program. So now, police are more likely to report meth labs to the GBI than the DEA, although neither is required, so they only know about the labs police voluntarily provide informaiton on.

According to the El Paso Intelilgence Center, which collects reports of meth labs from the DEA as well as other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, the number of incidents in Georgia dwindled from 335 to 72 between 2010 and 2012. (These include active labs of any size, as well as dump sites where only the byproducts of meth cooks are found.)

By contrast the GBI, which started tracking meth labs in 2011, saw 88 labs reported in the first year and 236 the following year — a threefold increase.

There is an ongoing concern that meth labs are being underreported by police because they have little incentive to take the time to fill out the forms, said David Hamby, Assistant Director of the National Methamphetamine & Pharmaceuticals Iniative. He said the fatal fire in Lilburn illustrates well why the public should be concerned about meth lab activity.

“You would have never known that lab was there if it hadn’t blown up,” Hamby said. “There are other labs out there right now, they just haven’t blown up and they haven’t been found.”