With Cars as Meth Labs, Evidence Litters Roads

Deputies Tim Briggs, left, and Scott Erdos in Kalamazoo County, Mich., preparing to dispose of discarded meth lab materials.

By SUSAN SAULNY
NYT

ELKHART, Ind. — The toxic garbage, often in clumps, blends in easily with the more mundane litter along rural roads and highways here: used plastic water bottles, old tubing, dirty gloves, empty packs of medicine. But it is a nuisance with truly explosive potential, and evidence of something more than simply a disregard for keeping the streets clean.

“The way to get rid of your meth lab these days is to put it in a plastic bag, then throw it out the car window,” said William V. Wargo, the chief investigator for the prosecuting attorney’s office in Elkhart County.

In the last few weeks, as the snow that had obscured the sides of roads, fields and parks has melted, law enforcement officials here have found at least a dozen so-called trash labs, the latest public safety hazard to emerge from the ever-shifting methods of producing methamphetamine.

Each trash lab becomes a crime scene and is proof, officials said, that a new and ever more popular way of making meth does not demand a lot of space or a lot of pseudoephedrine, an essential ingredient. The new method is a quick, mobile, one-pot recipe that requires only a few pills, a two-liter bottle and some common household chemicals.

(More here.)