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It shuts you down and you’re not capable of doing a whole lot,” Sergeant Kubic said. More than one in five burglars and nearly 40 percent of car thieves were also charged with meth crimes, according to the Portland Police Bureau. In Oregon, 232 people died from meth use in 2016, nearly twice as many as died from heroin - and three times as many as died from meth 10 years before, according to the state Department of Health.īetween 20, meth arrests were the only type of drug arrests in Portland to increase, and meth has the highest correlation with serious crimes. The percentage of the nation’s drug overdose toll that was attributed to stimulants inched up to 11 percent of the deaths. Nationally, nearly 6,000 people died from stimulant use - mostly meth - in 2015, a 255 percent increase from 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “You ask them about it, and they’ll say: ‘Hey, it’s half the price, and it’s good quality.’” “We’re seeing a lot of longtime addicts who used crack cocaine switch to meth,” said Branden Combs, a Portland officer assigned to the street crimes unit. Nearly 100 percent pure and about $5 a hit, the new meth is all the more difficult for users to resist. “They have figured out the chemical reactions to get the best bang for their bucks.” A wholesale plummet of price per pound, combined with a huge increase of purity, tells me they have perfected the production or manufacturing of methamphetamine,” said Steven Bell, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “I have been involved with meth for the last 25 years. In Portland, the drug has made inroads in black neighborhoods, something experienced narcotics investigators say was unheard-of five years ago. Under pressure from traffickers to unload large quantities, law enforcement officials say, dealers are even offering meth to customers on credit. The cartels have inundated the market with so much pure, low-cost meth that dealers have more of it than they know what to do with. Now fighting meth often means seizing large quantities of ready-made product in highway stops. When the ingredients became difficult to come by in the United States, Mexican drug cartels stepped in. Although some meth makers tried “smurfing,” sending emissaries to several stores to make purchases, meth cases plummeted.īut meth, it turns out, was only on hiatus. In 2005 Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Act, which put pseudoephedrine behind the counter, limited sales to 7.5 grams per customer in a 30-day period and required pharmacies to track sales. Everything would come to a screeching halt.” “Patrol would roll up on a domestic violence call, and there’d be a lab in the kitchen. “We rolled from meth lab to meth lab,” said Sgt. In 2004, the Portland police responded to 114 meth houses. Narcotics squads became glorified hazmat teams, spending entire shifts on cleanup. In the early 2000s, meth made from pseudoephedrine, the decongestant in drugstore products like Sudafed, poured out of domestic labs like those in the early seasons of the hit television show “Breaking Bad.” But also, two: There is more meth on the streets today, more people are using it, and more of them are dying.ĭrugs go through cycles - in the 1980s and early ’90s, the use of crack cocaine surged. One: The number of domestic meth labs has declined precipitously, and along with it the number of children harmed and police officers sickened by exposure to dangerous chemicals. The decades-long effort to fight methamphetamine is a tale with two takeaways. “But where there is a void,” he added, “someone fills it.”