Traci Fruit, a special agent with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said law enforcement officials are becoming increasingly frustrated because there's no way to tell who is buying what 'unless we go from store to store ourselves and pull up the records.'

Some states lack a central database to monitor cold medicine sales, so meth cooks circumvent state laws by pill shopping in multiple cities and states - a practice known as 'smurfing' that allows them to stay under restrictions placed on sales. The federal government and dozens of states adopted restrictions on pseudoephedrine in 2005, and the number of lab busts fell dramatically. It can be one of your family members living downstairs in the basement.'Ī typical meth lab would normally take days to generate a full-size batch of meth, which would require a heat source and dozens, maybe hundreds, of boxes of cold pills.īut because the new method uses far less pseudoephedrine, small-time users are able to make the drug in spite of a federal law that bars customers from buying more than 9 grams - roughly 300 pills - a month. 'It can be your next-door neighbor doing it. 'It simplified the process so much that everybody's making their own dope,' said Kevin Williams, sheriff of Marion County, Ala., about 80 miles west of Birmingham. The do-it-yourself method creates just enough meth for a few hits, allowing users to make their own doses instead of buying mass-produced drugs from a dealer. Dozens of reports describe toxic bottles strewn along highways and rural roads in states with the worst meth problems. They often discard the bottle, which now contains a poisonous brown and white sludge.

After the chemical reaction, what's left is a crystalline powder that users smoke, snort or inject.

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