As the recipe for meth spreads, the struggle in northern counties proves a cautionary tale.
By Associated Press
Published June 6, 2004
BONIFAY - Tucked deep in the Florida Panhandle backwoods, Holmes County has a history of residents who dabbled in making moonshine or growing marijuana.
Now, some of those same people or their descendants have moved to a new enterprise - cooking methamphetamine - and law enforcement officials say it could be a dangerous preview of what's in store elsewhere across Florida.
"Meth will kill you," said Holmes County Sheriff Dennis Lee, who has declared war on what is known in the Bible Belt community as "the devil's drug." His slogan: "Don't meth with the devil."
While Florida's meth problem still is considered in its infancy, it is making its biggest inroads in this part of the state. About half of the 269 clandestine meth labs cleaned in Florida by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration last year were in the Panhandle.
South and Central Florida overall have larger quantities of the drug because those areas are supplied from out-of-state sources, but the homemade variety is expected to spread there once local users learn the recipe.
"Our state is experiencing the same thing that our nation has," said Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent supervisor Ed Hudson. "The methamphetamine problem started in the west, and it has worked its way east. It took hold in the western part of Florida, and it's working its way east."
In the year and a half since Lee declared his war on the drug in this small county - population 18,628 - more than 700 people have been arrested. Fifty-nine meth labs were raided last year, about half big enough to require the federal cleanup.
Bay County, about 25 miles south of Holmes but with eight times the population, led the state with 59 labs that qualified for DEA funding. Holmes was next with 23. Another hot spot is Central Florida, particularly Brevard, Polk, Pasco and Orange counties.
In response, authorities are conducting one-week courses at St. Petersburg College to train more officers in dealing with the labs. FDLE also is attempting to maintain at least two agents in each of six regions for lab busts.
Local agencies can apply for grants of up to $100,000 for major cases from a $2.5-million state drug enforcement fund for such expenses as overtime, information and equipment rental, Hudson said. Grants and technical assistance also are available for prevention and treatment programs.
The DEA spent more than $600,000 cleaning clandestine meth labs in Florida during 2003. Each is a small toxic waste site. Most materials used in cooking meth are common household items readily available at retail stores, yet some are explosive or toxic, causing lung, kidney, liver, and brain damage, blindness, burns, and death.
The finished product is highly addictive and causes hallucinations, insomnia, anorexia, stroke, brain damage and death.
"Out of all the drugs that I've used . . . it is the one that would have ended up putting me in my grave," said Jeana Griffin, a recovering addict who now counsels others hooked on meth in Holmes County. "Had I not been stopped, I would not have been able to stop myself."
She was stopped at the point of a gun on April 17, 2003, when her lab was raided.
"She was lying on the floor," Chief Deputy Eddie Ingram recalled. "I had my machine gun literally to the back of her head."
The costs of Holmes' meth war have included buying or bartering for military-style weapons, bulletproof vests and helmets because most meth cooks are heavily armed and the drug can make them violent. The right side of Ingram's face was reconstructed after he was hit with a railroad spike during one lab raid.
Lee, who began with 15 officers including himself, has hired five more deputies to deal with meth Ingram was among those new hires. Meth is a personal issue for him. His ex-wife was killed in 1998 when she crashed her car while on meth.
"I raised my children without a mother on account of this stuff," Ingram said. "So what I used to see as everybody else's problem became my own."
The meth war filled Holmes' new, 120-bed jail to capacity last year, double the old jail's population. The costs of feeding and caring for twice as many inmates, most with meth-related health problems, and providing defense lawyers in many cases strained the poor county's limited resources.
County commissioners had to sell some road equipment to make ends meet. They supplemented the jail's medical budget by $25,000 last year and then increased the sheriff's spending by $224,000 - 15 percent - to $1.7-million.
Lee and his deputies speak at schools and churches and to civic groups. A faith-based coalition called Countywide Anti-Substance Abuse Efforts, or CASE, offers a 12-step rehabilitation program.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of meth is how it affects children. Seventy-four children have been taken from parents arrested on meth charges in Holmes since February 2003.
They have been placed in foster care at a cost of $11 a day plus medical expenses, Ingram said. Many need medical care due to neglect or being exposed to toxic substances in the labs. Some are meth babies born to addicts.
Ingram credited the crackdown for a dramatic decline in burglaries and other crime. Meth arrests also are starting to drop.
"I think we're over the hump," Sheriff Lee said. "I've had a lot of people that we've put in jail . . . who have thanked us for saving their lives."
