In 2014, State Troopers didn’t seize a single methamphetamine lab, although the amount of meth seized and the number of arrests were both up.
Lt. Leath: “There were not any meth labs identified by law enforcement. We do think there’s meth labs out there. Since the ending of the statistics that we collected for this report, we have identified three different methamphetamine labs in the state of Alaska, so we do know they still exist, but in the calendar year 2014 we did not come across one in a criminal situation.”
Taking a longer term look, the number of meth labs seized by Troopers has been dropping since 2006. Five “labs” were found in 2013, but all of them were the more mobile, more dangerous “shake and bake” variety, which is…
Lt. Leath: “A lab that is very simplified and usually consists of some large vessel. What we usually see is a two-liter soda bottle where numerous chemicals are combined into one vessel and sometimes shaken to initiate a chemical reaction and the end result is a chemical that people consume and a lot of times it’s a methamphetamine derivative that people consume as a result of that.”
In virtually every other region of the country, the number of meth labs seized by law enforcement officers has been going up.