A portable method for cooking methamphetamines has led to a record-matching month for lab busts in North Carolina and is creating worries that more people are in danger from an unstable drug that now can be manufactured in parking lots, hotel rooms and even duffel bags.
The "shake-and-bake" method of cooking meth - also called "one-pot labs" - is the main reason for the steady increase in meth lab discoveries, from 157 in 2007 to 235 last year, the State Bureau of Investigation says. As of Wednesday, 111 meth labs have been uncovered this year.
The meth is cooked in a 2-liter bottle. The recipe requires just a couple of grams of the primary ingredient, pseudoephedrine. In February, 46 labs were discovered, matching the previous record month of April 2005, before the state passed a law that requires stores to keep drugs containing that ingredient behind the counter. The law also requires consumers to register when they buy such drugs, usually nasal decongestants.
But with just a few grams of pseudoephedrine needed for each batch of meth, cooks hire people called "smurfs," who buy the medicine legally.
One-pot labs "can be anywhere - parking lots, cars on Interstate 40, residences, apartments," said Todd Duke, the SBI's assistant special agent in charge of the clandestine laboratory response unit. "Everywhere, anywhere - anywhere you can carry a 2-liter bottle. It doesn't need heat. It's a self-contained cook in that bottle. You could put in a backpack and walk down the street with it."
Their small size doesn't diminish the danger caused by the leftover sludge and the ammonia-smelling gas that meth creates. Sheriff Blake Wallace in Duplin County, where six meth labs have been busted this year, said the last lab was found in a duffel bag in a car that a deputy stopped for a traffic violation.
"He smelled some chemicals that alerted him and got the occupants out," Wallace said. "After a cursory search, he determined it was an active lab and backed off."
Clean-up crews wear air packs and protective suits when they determine if they have an active lab, then wait for haz-mat crews to process evidence and clean the area of toxins.
"Because they're so small and so portable, they can go places other labs can't, such as a hotel room or rental vehicles. If toxins are left behind, and you're the next person to rent that hotel room or car and you're exposed, you can imagine what it would do to your health."
The SBI busted its first "shake-and-bake" lab in December 2009, Duke said. The process emerged in Tennessee, where nearly 2,100 meth labs were busted in 2010, and has moved eastward across North Carolina since.
"For a while, after they came out with the new laws on being able to only buy so much pseudoephedrine, it really went down," said Bobby Suttles, sheriff in Haywood County in western North Carolina. "But they developed a way to get a little bit here, a little bit there, and they're back in business."
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