Sgt. Lowell “Chip” Woodman said they’ve also discovered the labs through informants, surveillance and checks on a statewide database that tracks individuals’ cold-medicine buys.
A 29-year-old woman with a toddler is busted inside a run-down camper. Two twentysomething brothers are caught in a family cabin deep in the Maine woods. A 32-year-old woman in a mobile home tries to run when agents show up.
She doesn’t get far.
Still more people are discovered allegedly cooking meth in their cars, while others are catching themselves on fire.
The state has seen it all this year.
A special unit called the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s Clandestine Drug Laboratory Enforcement Team has responded to 19 confirmed methamphetamine labs so far in 2013, more than the past two years combined.
In 2009, the special team responded to one meth lab.
Police point to the recent ease of setting up a lab as a major reason — the “one-pot” method takes only a plastic soda bottle and over-the-counter finds such as lithium batteries and lye.
The trend in “one-pots” is making the drug for personal use, not so much for sale, but there’s still a steep cost for taxpayers: The MDEA has spent up to $15,000 to respond and clean up each lab.
Police say it’s also very easy for something to go wrong for “cookers” or bystanders.
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