Local leaders are urging new meth legislation limiting access to the drug’s key ingredients to stem the tide of the “epidemic.”

During an educational forum on methamphetamine at the Colonnade on Friday, health workers and government and law enforcement officials stressed the need for legislation restricting the sale of ephedrine and pseudephedrine, the essential components of meth. Several in attendance referenced an Oklahoma law that requires products containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, commonly found in cold medicine, be sold from behind the counter. Purchasers there must also show identification and register for the product.

Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said the Tennessee legislature plans to pass a law similar to the one in Oklahoma next year, possibly flooding North Georgia with people from Tennessee purchasing ephedrine products and cooking the drug. He said Georgia must follow Oklahoma’s lead before the influx from the state border.

“Right now I don’t see a good program to get people off methamphetamine,” he said. “We have to limit access to pseudoephedrine (and ephedrine).”

Alan Miles, Catoosa detective and Lookout Mountain Drug Task Force member, said during the first month of the new law’s implementation in Oklahoma, meth lab busts decreased by 30 percent; after four months they decreased by 70 percent.

“Meth consumes people’s whole being,” he said. “They don’t care about anything but meth.”

Summers said officers have shut down 32 meth labs in the county this year. Fort Oglethorpe Police Chief Doug Howell said 14 such labs have been closed in the city.

“It is an epidemic; there is no question,” Summers said.

Ringgold Councilman J.B. Petty touted education as a start in fighting the war on the drug. There is a need to control the products in the meth recipe, he said.

Offering rewards for people who report suspected meth labs may be an additional measure needed, he said.

Catoosa County Board of Commissioners Chair Winford Long said more public service information and education may encourage people to start reporting meth labs.

Next month, the sheriff’s department is beginning a program to educate rental property owners about identifying labs, Summers said.

He said costs to clean a residence where a meth lab was located range between $12,000-$15,000.

Deadly scourge

Phil Price, supervisor of Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s regional drug office covering the 37 counties north of Interstate 20, said the meth epidemic is spreading.

From 1996 to 2001, meth use increased 300 percent, where cocaine and marijuana only had a slight change in the same period, he said.

“This is the number one drug problem in the world according to the World Health Organization,” he said. “It’s reached such a scale its overloading our system.”

Tennessee ranks third in the nation behind California and Missouri in meth busts, Price said. Georgia ranks 18th, but 11th for children exposed to the drug. In 1999, 27 labs were found in Georgia, compared to 373 from January to May of this year, he said.

Miles said 98 percent of the Lookout Mountain Drug Task Force’s cases are meth related, taking away from investigations into prescription fraud and other illegal drugs.

Catoosa Coroner Vanita Hullander said six deaths in the county have been meth-related — two murders, two children that died from parental abuse and two who died from an accelerated heart rate caused by using the drug.

Capt. Clay Ellis, who oversees training for Fort Oglethorpe Fire & Rescue, said firefighters had little knowledge of the dangers of meth until a few years ago.

Twenty firefighters were exposed to meth, and one was taken to the hospital, fighting the Feb. 17, 2001, fire that killed 15-month-old Shelton Hicks at his Lakeview home. Shelton’s parents, Chris Hicks and Suzette Calloway, are currently serving a life sentence for the infant’s death, caused when a pot of meth the elder Hicks was cooking exploded.

“That was really an eye-opening experience for us in our department,” he said.

Price noted 30 percent of the labs nationally are discovered because of a fire.

Pleasure and psychosis

There are basically two methods of production — the anhydrous ammonia method and the red phosphorous recipe, which is the most predominant in Georgia, Price said.

Miles said he has only seen one anhydrous lab in his investigations, in Fort Oglethorpe, but it was not fully operational.

He said the anhydrous method is much faster than the five to seven hours to create the product in the red phosphorous method, but anhydrous ammonia can cause lungs to freeze, is highly corrosive, and causes skin contact injuries.

“(Meth makers are creating) a poison that is flammable, corrosive and explosive,” Miles said.

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In addition to homemade labs, the Northwest Georgia area is also seeing an influx of the drug imported from Mexico and South America by the “truckload,” Miles said.

The detective said the concoction is destroying families. He said addicts are cooking next to baby bottles and storing the deadly chemical ingredients next to food and medicine, adding to the dangers of a highly addictive drug.

Price said a six-month meth rehabilitation program is only 6-9 percent successful.

It is not uncommon to go without sleep for seven to 10 days, Price said, but users can stay up as much as 16 days. He said the attraction to the drug is because it causes the brain to release dopamine, the chemical that gives the body pleasure.

But with the pleasure also comes delusion and paranoia, he said. Price described an incident in Arizona where a father strung out on meth decapitated his 10-year-old son. In his paranoid state, he thought the boy was a DEA agent.

Formerly known as the “redneck drug,” Price said it is now a drug used by people from all walks of life. He said he has arrested doctors and police officers for using meth.

He emphasized the first step in curbing the scourge is education, and the second is being proactive and enthusiastic in the fight.

“This is probably the most destructive drug I have ever seen,” Price said