Meth Busts Rising In Kalamazoo Area
KALAMAZOO (Newschannel 3) - Meth lab busts are on the rise in the Kalamazoo area.
The Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team has already seized 18 meth labs this year, in comparison to the 27 they busted in all of 2007.
Drug officers say the increase is due to a new way to cook meth: it's called the "one-pot method" or "shake and bake."
That's what cops found Friday evening along Dayton Ave. in Kalamazoo Township. They say meth cookers are using something as small as a one or two-liter soda bottle to make the drug, and instead of the processing taking several hours, cooks can make meth in as little as 30 minutes.
Drug officers also say a switch to household fertilizer is fueling the rise, as all the ingredients are easy to buy. Those ingredients include pseudoephedrine, the cold medicine state law put behind the counter.
"These people go to numerous pharmacies in a day, buy one to two boxes at each pharmacy, unfortunately pharmacies aren't linked together," said Sgt. David Boysen with KVET. "You can buy two boxes at a pharmacy, go next door, get two more boxes, they'll just do that throughout the entire county."
KVET officers say because of all these busts of one-pot labs, they're not able to quickly respond to tips from the public, as processing and cleaning up each lab takes four to six hours.
