Team Amber Alert News (Texas)
Atlanta, Ga. - Just days after the Drug Enforcement Administration made its largest-ever meth seizure in Georgia, agents have dismantled the largest meth lab ever seen in the state.
Acting on tips from neighbors who’d smelled strong chemical scents coming from the home, authorities started investigating the suspected drug manufacturing.
They found the home’s residents had been dumping large quantities of liquids in the yard, and had been shopping for extremely large quantities of Drano and muriatic acid-two chemicals which can be used to make methamphetamine. The February 9 raid at 200 Church Road in Smyrna found a massive meth-making operation in the basement.
Three Mexican nationals were arrested in the ongoing investigation. The Feds say a lab of this size is virtually unheard-of on the east coast, where “Mom and Pop” clandestine labs have been the rule.
Less than two weeks ago, DEA Special Agent in Charge Sherri Strange told WSB’s Veronica Waters increased metro Atlanta methamphetamine trafficking is simply based on supply and demand.
“If they can get it from the border and it’s manufactured and it’s cheaper, then they will go to that. If they can’t get it, then they’ll revert to manufacturing because it is cheap and easy to manufacture,” said Strange.
She was speaking about the evidence that Georgia has a growing meth trade; agents had just seized the largest-ever shipment seen in the state--125 pounds of suspected “ice,” which is the purest, most powerful and addictive form of methamphetamine.
Meth cooking isn’t dependent upon Mother Nature and limited by growing cycles, like cocaine, marijuana, or heroin.
“You don’t need acres and acres of cultivating plants or plant material at all,” Strange explains. “You can simply go into a house, buy the chemicals, dump and pour and cook.”
That, she says, is what was happening in the basement of a Smyrna home...for how long, authorities don’t yet know. But this is the first ever “super-lab” found in Georgia; by far, most are in California and Mexico. While the average meth lab makes up to two ounces a day, this lab could make at least 10 pounds of “cook” every 24 hours.
“We seized 39.5 pounds of methamphetamine, and 11 pounds ice,” said Strange. “In addition, we found about 250 gallons or more of sludge and liquids in various stages of the methamphetamine manufacturing process.” Agents also discovered 24 trash bags full of empty pseudoephedrine bottles-which they believe once contained about 240,000 pills.
It’s another sign of how meth use is on the rise---and how Atlanta has become the southeast’s distribution point for the drug. Strange says agents gauge a drug’s popularity with an informal canvass of treatment centers. “Those who said that their primary drug was cocaine--that is decreasing now, and those who are admitting themselves stating that methamphetamine is their primary drug has increased by 10% in the past year,” Strange says.
Agent Strange says it’s alarming because meth and ice are the most powerful stimulants on the market today. They can cause heart and brain damage, psychotic behavior, hallucinations, and paranoia.
“It will create a new generation of addicts,” she says.