By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Like other criminals, meth makers adapt, Cass County authorities contacted for Thursday's National Methamphetamine Awareness Day point out.
So dents made in the past two years by expanding the drug team the Sheriff's Office and Dowagiac Police Department have shared since 1999 won't quell the epidemic without continued law enforcement pressure.
The five-member Cass County Drug Enforcement Team (CCDET) of the Sheriff's Office and city police force resulted from voters approving a half-mill, four-year property tax levy in August 2004 to step up the battle against meth beginning in January 2005.
Capt. Lyndon Parrish, a 20-year veteran of the Cass County Sheriff's Office, sees several trends.
Due to increased laws on chemicals used to make meth and the advent of Glotel, a pink substance now placed in much of the ammonia used in the fields that decreases its potency and makes it harder to use in making meth, authorities are seeing fewer calls of stolen anhydrous ammonia from farmers.
Instead, cooks resort to other items, such as non-liquid fertilizers, from which they can leach ammonia.
"This is good in that it means less chances for dangerous ammonia leaks from tanks near residences," Parrish said Wednesday.
"Due to increased laws on ephedrine tablets," Parrish says, "we're finding fewer labs as well. What we're finding is that people are going 'pill shopping' – going from place to place to get enough pills to make meth. Locally, they have gone as far as the UP (Upper Peninsula) or even into Ohio to do this. One thing this law has done is make ephedrine pills as valuable as the meth. Some persons are even trading pills for meth. We've been working with the sellers of the pills – pharmacists, etc. – and the officers from the counties next to us to track this and to work together to get a bigger picture on how much this is happening."
As far as the team and millage cramping the local meth trade, "We put a large dent in the meth trafficking and cooking within the county for the first couple of years," Parrish said. "But now we've got to keep up the pressure."
"What we saw initially," he said, "is that after the first year, meth lab callouts and callouts to clean up dumped meth labs decreased substantially. We arrested a lot of our meth cooks within the county and they underwent treatment at the jail and many had their children temporarily removed from them as well."
But within the last three to four months, he noted, "We're starting to find more labs again and most of the labs we've found are from people that we locked up over a year ago.
"We've had two cases where the same parents have had their children taken from them again by DHS (state Department of Human Services). The good thing is that we're not seeing many new names involved in producing and distributing meth and there are some old names that we aren't seeing," Parrish said. "This tells us that our efforts are at least keeping new criminals from coming into our county to cook and some of the prior meth producers have apparently stopped their involvement in it."
Parrish said, "One thing that disturbed us is that when the discovered meth labs started going down, we starting hearing from some people that the meth epidemic was over in Cass County. That obviously is not true. Like other criminals they adapt. Although we went through a six-month lull in labs, as did other counties around us, now they are actually back on the rise in our county. We've taken down three labs within the last two months and are receiving tips weekly of more locations."
Parrish said law enforcement needs to "continue to work with our partners at the federal, state and local level to adapt as well and keep up the pressure so that the makers and sellers of this drug know that our county is not the place to go."
"The meth scourge has been dealt a real setback in Cass County," according to Prosecutor Victor Fitz. "The citizens' drug millage has made much of this possible."
Fitz said it has "provided an aggressive drug team and tough drug prosecutions. These efforts, combined with innovative legislation, proper sentencing and a family drug court, have helped stem the meth tide in Cass County."
"Major cookers have been arrested and sent to prison," Fitz said Wednesday. "CCDET officers have proven very effective in ferreting out and rounding up the meth crowd in all corners of this county. The prosecutor's office has convicted 100 percent of felony meth offenders who have gone to jury. While there continue to be meth arrests in the area, we have seen a significant decrease in the sophistication and effectiveness of the meth manufacturers. Meth producers are looking over their shoulder. They are on the run."
Fitz agrees with Parrish that "it is essential to remain vigilant."
"Otherwise," the prosecutor said, "meth activity will rebound with a vengeance. Fighting meth, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, hallucinogens and other drugs is a never-ending process. The pressure must remain constant."
"The voters deserve tremendous credit for addressing this drug problem," Fitz said. "Thanks to the millage, meth has a tough adversary in Cass County."
Steve Lehman, addictions program supervisor for Cassopolis-based Woodlands Behavioral Healthcare Network, said Thursday that meth primary treatment admissions have dropped from 10 percent to 3 percent for the period April 1 through Sept. 30.
They had been running 10 percent along with crack cocaine.
"I would attribute this to law enforcement efforts," Lehman said. "I believe the Sheriff's Office and prosecutor are doing a great job with arrests, prosecutions and lab busts, as well as public education and retailer efforts and laws that restrict access to primary over-the-counter drugs used for manufacture."
"Once the precursor supply line catches up, I think meth will go back up, but not over the long term be sustained at the level of the top three," Lehman said.
"Of significance, and somewhat typical of society," Lehman said, "is that our admissions for the past 18 years have been consistent, with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine as one, two and three, respectively. I believe we will see an increase in heroin as that drug typically follows on the wave of meth, and steady, slow growth in oxycontin-related drugs.
"We are hearing anecdotally of more heroin moving in," Lehman said, "but not yet seeing them in treatment."