Next Generation Meth
Meth 2.0 has found its way to Kentucky. Also known as crystal methamphetamine, the drug has law enforcement’s full attention.
“Crystal meth is about 95 percent of my caseload,” said Kentucky State Police Detective Zachary Bryson, who is a member of KSP’s Drug Enforcement/Special Investigations Unit in Eastern Kentucky. “There’s no questions about it. It is the number one drug purchased in Eastern Kentucky’s rural communities.”
It is no secret that methamphetamines have destroyed many lives, Bryson added. In the early 2000s, one-step meth labs produced much of the narcotic in Kentucky.
However, in 2013, the Kentucky General Assembly enacted legislation (KRS 218A.1446) to make it increasingly difficult to obtain products such as Sudafed, a key ingredient in manufacturing methamphetamine. As a result, methamphetamine production at the local level dropped, Bryson said.
Kentucky State Police Detective Zachary Bryson said 95 percent of his caseload with KSP’s Drug Enforcement/Special Investigations Unit in Eastern Kentucky are meth 2.0 cases. (Photo by Jim Robertson)
“The meth was being constructed in a clandestine area such as someone’s house,” he explained. “We were consistently busy with combating it. I started cleaning up meth labs in 2010 with the Division of Public Safety in London before I was with the Kentucky State Police. It was not unusual for us to clean up two to three meth labs a day.
“In 2018 and 2019, you could go through an extended period where you wouldn’t clean up a meth lab for three or four months,” Bryson continued. “When you did, most often it would be (discovered by) accident – a traffic stop or a domestic (incident).”
Meth 2.0 and the Cartel Connection
Methamphetamine is not a new drug. Its origins are traced back to 1887 when it was first made in Germany, according to drugfreeworld.org.
Ever since its first batch, the narcotic has seemingly evolved. The latest version has its roots in the Mexican drug cartels, according to a November 2019 article in USA Today.
“Meth 2.0 is stronger, cheaper and far more plentiful than the old home-cooked variety,” the article continued.
KSP Sgt. Nathan Moore, with the Drug Enforcement/Special Investigations Unit in Eastern Kentucky, agreed that cartels play a significant role in the influx of the drug in Kentucky.
Kentucky State Police Sgt. Nathan Moore said Mexican drug cartels play an enormous role in supplying meth to Kentucky. (Photo by Jim Robertson)
“They’re distributing it to (bigger), urban areas in large quantities,” Moore said. “It will then fan out into the smaller, rural areas. When we track our investigations, they lead us to more populated areas. That’s where you see the larger distributors.”
Those who deal drugs at the street level travel to larger cities such as Louisville, Cincinnati, or Huntington, W.Va., to purchase meth at roughly $250 an ounce and return to rural Kentucky where they peddle the product at $500 an ounce, Bryson added.
It was around 2018 when meth 2.0 started rearing its ugly head in the state, according to Bryson. With the law in place regarding Sudafed, purchasing meth 2.0 from street dealers is a viable option for those seeking the drug.
“Why should they (local dealers) go through the risk of producing a lab when you’ve got all of these different (meth-making materials)?” asked Bryson. “You’ve got to worry about Sudafed. You have to worry about all these different chemicals. You have to be discrete in gathering … without drawing attention to yourself.
“Now, you can go to one place and buy crystal meth because it’s seemingly on every corner in every community,” Bryson continued. “People have turned to it because it’s more discreet, available, and it’s a cleaner and stronger high.”
In addition to the stronger high, many people dealing methamphetamine are lacing the drug with fentanyl, which makes it much more addictive, Bryson said.
“On a case that I worked a while back, we kept getting trace amounts of fentanyl in the meth,” he explained. “When I interviewed the subject about this case, I was looking at it from the standpoint that it could have been trace amounts leftover from another baggie, or it could have been bagged together on the same table and had residual mixtures.”
“It wasn’t either,” Bryson continued. “The subject said they mix fentanyl with meth because the withdrawal from the fentanyl is worse than the methamphetamine. That makes the person come back to (the dealer) faster because they’re withdrawing harder.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain reliever that is up to 100 times more potent than morphine.
An Unforgiving Drug
In recent years, authorities have seen a steady rise in overdose deaths associated with Meth 2.0, according to a November 2019 article on spectrumnews1.com.
According to the Office of Drug Control Policy’s 2018 Kentucky Overdose Fatality Report, 428 Kentuckians lost their lives due to a methamphetamine overdose.
“Unfortunately, when you see an increase in utilization, you’re going to see the impact of it in overdoses,” Moore said. “It’s tough to say how much it is influencing that. You could also make the argument that it may be much more impactful than what we think or what the statistics are showing. It’s difficult to attribute it to (meth 2.0) solely, but at the same time, there is a connection in the overdose deaths.”
Bryson added that as the product purity increases, so too does the chance of user overdose.
It’s Coming Soon
If meth 2.0 has not reached a specific area, Bryson and Moore warned that it is on the way.
“There are certainly regional differences to a degree,” Moore said. “There may be certain areas not as impacted or seeing a significant rise, but overall, I think the state as a whole sees the same trends.”
Bryson added that there are some telltale identifiers of meth 2.0 activity.
“We see a lot of overdoses, and the meth 2.0 speaks to that trend across many platforms of narcotics,” Bryson said.
An uptick in crime trends may also indicate it is in the community.
“You’re going to see certain crimes that most likely are going to be correlated with an increase in drugs in the area,” Bryson said. “You can never underestimate intelligence. It is something you can always rely on and information sharing. There have been many improvements across the state in that regard.”
Paying attention to what is happening in larger cities could forewarn of a potential problem in the more rural areas, Moore added.
“We can generally say from a criminal perspective, what we see in the more populated cities ultimately trickles down to your smaller towns,” Moore said. “There is a general pattern that seems to happen. So when you saw the proliferation of heroin, it wasn’t long before it started to impact Kentucky and other areas as well. We see the same thing with methamphetamine. If it is not there, it’s coming soon.”
