The quality of the drug might not stack up to the blue product made by Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg, but in recent years, Ohio has seen an increase in methamphetamine lab busts as state and local law enforcement officials pledge to take action against them.
There was a 588 percent increase in meth lab busts statewide in the past five years, according to a Post analysis of state data, and local officials say more and more are popping up in Athens County.
According to August statistics from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office, in the fiscal year 2013, which started in October 2012, law enforcement seized 770 meth labs.
That’s about 150 more labs than in 2012, and nearly double the 2011 total of 375.
In comparison with other Ohio counties, the statistics suggest there are more meth labs popping up in Athens, but just above average.
The most busts were in Summit County, which includes Akron, with 230.
The spike in lab busts is largely due to a new method of manufacturing methamphetamine known as “shake and bake,” said Scott Duff, a special agent supervisor for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.
The method is pretty simple: mix unstable ingredients — including household chemicals — in a bottle, and then shake it.
“It has never been this easy to make methamphetamine, and the shake and bake method is by far the most common method people are using,” Duff said. “I’d say over 95 percent of cases in Ohio have used the shake and bake method and I’m sure people in other states are using the same method.”
But Duff also said the state might be seizing more meth labs because law enforcement officials are now more trained to locate meth labs and recognize what they look like.
There have been 16 meth labs found in Athens County this year, according to the state data, but Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly said his Narcotics Enforcement Team has seized 24.
“All politicians inflate their numbers,” Kelly said. “(DeWine) is going off the reports of the agencies that reported it. I just spoke with my head of narcotics and he said we’ve had 24 labs from October to now.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how the two agencies came up with different numbers, and a spokeswoman from DeWine’s office didn’t return a phone call seeking further comment by press time.
Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle said he’s seen some local labs in the city, but the majority are found outside the city.
“If you watch Breaking Bad, they aren’t cooking meth in houses that are being bug bombed, I can tell you that,” Pyle said. “Typically, they drove that RV out into the desert because of the smell and the odor… There are very few places in the city where they could get away with something like that.”
Still, Kelly said there are many more meth labs out there.
“It’s a great thing that we’ve found (the 770 labs), but that’s like saying that we have 100 sexual predators in Athens County,” Kelly said. “No, we have 100 convicted sexual predators in Athens County. There’s a whole lot more than that.”
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