As if you needed something new to worry about: Just as we stopped staggering from the most recent blows from the financial sector of the government, as we have tried to rebound from the extra cost and damaged caused by the summer’s heat dome danger, as we worked to keep our feet in reaction to the never ending round of political bleating, we also are confronted with the reality that we are having to wave the white flag in the war on meth.
There has been local, regional and national concern about how the continuing fiscal constraints were affecting law enforcement and in the war on methamphetamine, that includes giving up some cases because the communities simply don’t have the money to clean up the meth mess.
As the Associated Press reported this week: “Police and sheriff’s departments in states that produce much of the nation’s methamphetamine have made a sudden retreat in the war on meth, at times virtually abandoning pursuit of the drug because they can no longer afford to clean up the toxic waste generated by labs.
“Despite abundant evidence that the meth trade is flourishing, many law enforcement agencies have called off tactics that have been used for years to confront drug makers,” the AP report noted.
In part, the change is due to a lack of federal funding. The AP reported that “the number of labs seized has plummeted by a third in some key meth-producing states and two-thirds in at least one, Alabama.”
Local law enforcement agents have known for years that they were up against it with meth.
It is much more toxic, in every way, than anything that has been faced before.
And it is not only toxic for those who take it. It is also toxic for the children who are too frequently around while it is being cooked and it is also toxic to the surroundings of where it is cooked.
That could be in a motel room, a rented mobile home, or in the house next door to you.
Frankly, drug agents do not know when clean is “clean enough” when it comes to meth. They don’t know how dangerous the building is where meth has been cooked, what the long term affect is on those who unknowingly are exposed to the by-products of the cook.
What they do know is that it is exceedingly expensive to clean up after the cook, and they know that money has to come from somewhere.
The local law enforcement will get stuck with the bill in a routine that we have seen over and over. As the federal and state authorities save their own bacon, pad their own payrolls, continue to add to their own perks and benefits; the local officials are left with the dirty job of having to either clean up these meth cooks or — or what?
What is the alternative?
Well, that is what has been dropped in our lap.
Perhaps the courts will need to start condemning the property. Boarding it up or tearing it down. Surely the EPA wouldn’t allow us to burn them. That would just release the toxins into the atmosphere.
This very dirty mess has been dropped in our laps by “higher” government that is increasingly NOT leading and seems to be unable to do its job.
— Chuck Smith