Alabama is seeing a resurgence in methamphetamine labs, a reversal from the decrease that followed a 2005 state law that made it harder to buy the main ingredients, drug enforcement agents tell the Birmingham News. More meth cooks in the past year have started using a simpler, “one-pot” cooking method that takes fewer ingredients and can be mostly completed in a two-liter plastic soft drink bottle, authorities say. Jason Murray, commander of the Talladega County Drug Task Force, said his agents have found 70 of the “one-pot,” or “shake and bake,” meth labs since October.
That contrasts with about 45 meth labs the task force found in all of 2007, he said. “It’s like somebody turned on a spigot,” Murray said. Matt Germanowski, a supervisor in the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Birmingham, estimated that about 135 “one-pot” labs have been reported to the DEA statewide since October. Many were found discarded on roadsides, he said. The number doesn’t represent a total number of labs found statewide, he said, because not all are reported to the DEA.
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