Meth still problem for rural areas throughout Illinois

Methamphetamine production continues to be a problem for rural areas like Union County. Illinois Sheriff’s Association president Gib Cady and Union County Sheriff David Livesay voiced their concerns about meth and its impact on Illinois in the following commentary.

In the past couple months in travels around Illinois and even at a meeting in Florida, we heard from law enforcement everywhere that meth is back.

We were shocked because of all the money and education that has gone into locking these people up and showing people what meth does to them physically.

As you may remember, this drug came from the West Coast as they all seem to do. The first we saw of it was when Missouri passed a bunch of good laws and ran the manufacture of meth out of the hills in Missouri into the southern parts of Illinois.

Illinois reacted with our own laws, and law enforcement made numerous arrests and filled up our jails with the people who made this stuff.

Today, the people who were in jail from the first round are now out of prison, still addicted, and still making the drug to get high. There are a couple of differences but not many.

It’s still cheap, it still has the same chemical needs and reactions in the manufacture as before, and it still can turn a human body into a hideous form of disgusting humanity.

As time goes past, there are more pictures of how pretty girls and handsome boys turn into old women and skinny old men with no teeth because they fall out. The outer body skin develops numerous sores that break open and bleed and cause scratching.

Don’t forget this stuff is the most addictive drug there is. With meth, one try and you can be gone the same as if you caught a large-caliber bullet between the eyes.

With the serious increase in traffic, we have to re-educate all of agriculture about anhydrous and its necessity to make methamphetamine. We think the drive to make anhydrous useless for making meth stopped when use of the drug declined and because Mexico was making it so cheap that users began going there for their fixes.

So, now we’re back to worrying about anhydrous and those people who use the old recipes to make meth.

Today’s group of meth makers has developed ways of using new products and forcing more of those products to be stored behind the store counter so you must sign to purchase them.

Remember when we told you to watch for someone buying large quanities of batteries or pseudoephedrine, or when you found those packages of those items open and discarded somewhere to let us know?

Today that list includes items bought in auto parts stores, such things as brake fluid and starting fluid.

Because there is so much profit in the illegal drug business and because we in the U.S. are the world’s biggest drug users, another scheme to get the products to make the stuff has been developed by the manufacturing people here and in Mexico. it’s called, “smurfing.”

Smurfing is when someone solicits people who really need money, homeless people, addicts, unemployed people, or those looking for a quick dollar, and get them to go from store to store buying the drug-making ingredients needed and keeping the drug maker’s name out of the public records.

The National Drug Intelligence Center now says there is more methamphetamine-making products getting into Mexico by smurfing than by any other means.

Another major ingredient available from farm stores, pharmacies, or retail stores is iodine tincture. We don’t have any control on tincture, just crystals, and that is only if 0.4 of kilogram or more is purchased during a two-month period.

All this profit is fueling drug wars. Homeland Security gives us, at least once a week, the body count in Mexico of the people who opposed the drug powers.

Recently we have found and arrested drug criminals who are using our quiet rural roads to hide and serve as pickup points and production of meth (mobile labs).

It is not uncommon to come into the jail in the morning and find all the new people brought in overnight were meth arrests. Have we got your attention yet?