Forum Communications newspapers across the state have posted Andrew Hazzard's article, Meth still region's drug of choice, and it's gaining popularity, which underscores the fact that opioids aren't the only drug complicating the lives of Minnesotans.
Hazzard reports:
As communities struggle to address the rising popularity of heroin and other opioid narcotics, attention has shifted away from another drug with a nationwide grip. But the popularity of methamphetamine does not seem to be waning. . . .
Minnesota has experienced a 489 percent increase from 2009 to 2016 in meth seizures, according to the Department of Public Safety.
2009 marked a low point in levels for people seeking treatment, arrests and seizures for methamphetamine in both North Dakota and Minnesota, but numbers have dramatically increased since then.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety announced the seizure of 487.7 pounds of meth in 2016, more than double the 230.3 pounds seized in 2015. In 2012, just 112.6 pounds of meth were confiscated by law enforcement in Minnesota. . .
Minnesota Department of Public Safety gang and drug coordinator Brian Marquart said that around 2007, cartels figured out a way to mass produce high-quality methamphetamine.
That accounts for some of "the massive influx of methamphetamine we're seeing across the country, including in North Dakota and Minnesota," he said.
User-quantity level methamphetamine now ranges from 70 to 80 percent pure, Marquart said. In the early 2000s when local small-batch meth labs were more common, the quality of the product was high, but the quantity was relatively low.
"Now we are seeing very high quality, into the 80th percentile at the user level," he said.
"A few years ago, a large seizure coming into this state would have been 3 to 5 pounds," Marquart said. "Now we are seeing seizures of 30, 50, 70, even 100 pounds of methamphetamine either coming into this state or bound for Minnesota and North Dakota."
The user base in the region is very high now, Marquart said. Both states are seeing higher numbers of people seeking treatment.
Read the entire story at the Brainerd Dispatch.
Photo: Meth makes better television than reality.
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