A little more than a decade ago, one of the primary focuses of the Wright County Sheriff’s Office was the explosive growth in the use and manufacturing of the highly-addictive drug methamphetamine – a problem that resulted in the creation of MEADA, a multi-jurisdictional meth education and awareness program to get the word out as to the dangers of the drug and the warning signs of users.
Due to changes in the law and increased awareness of what to look for, it seemed as though law enforcement won the battle with the scourge of meth addiction. However, a dozen years after it began to spread significantly through Wright County, it has reared its ugly head again in a new and more dangerous way.
"We thought we had come close to eradicating meth when the laws changed several years ago and we had a better handle of what to look for in users and those who manufacture meth," Wright County Sheriff Joe Hagerty said.
"You never completely eradicate drugs, but we thought we had the upper hand. In the past year, we’ve not only seen a pretty significant return of meth, but the users more and more are using it intravenously."
The meth boom hit Minnesota hard 12 years ago. It started on the West Coast in California west coast and took a couple of years to work its way east.
Wright County was inundated because meth labs emit a strong smell and need to be operated outside of populated areas to conceal the stench that is part of the cooking process. As a result, many makeshift labs were set up on rural seasonal cabin properties.
The difference between methamphetamine and almost all other drugs is that the ingredients were readily available to anyone, and with the right equipment could be manufactured by anyone with the inclination to do so.
Former Sheriff Gary Miller estimated that a decade ago, about 75 percent of prisoners in the county jail were there as the result of methamphetamine – either users, sellers, manufacturers or people committing crimes to feed their meth addiction.
Matt Treichler, lieutenant of operations of the Wright County Sheriff’s Office, said that a combination of law enforcement work and changes to the laws that made over-the-counter medicine such as Sudafed – a key ingredient in the manufacturing of methamphetamine – less readily available, struck a blow in the local production of meth. But, as is often the case, when a void is created, someone else finds a way to fill that void.
Problem never went away
"It never really went away," he said. "What went away was the home-grown labs, so it was somewhat less available early on when we started cracking down on those. The decrease was due in large part to changes in the law dealing with pseudoephedrine – medicine like Sudafed that was an ingredient in manufacturing meth.
"What happened was the drug cartels in Mexico saw the opportunity to flood the market. About 90 percent of the meth we find in Wright County and throughout Minnesota is now coming from Mexico."
One of the issues currently facing law enforcement is that not only has meth made a comeback, so has heroin in recent years. Heroin’s return to prominence is due in large part to the prescription opioid painkiller epidemic.
The reaction the body has to drugs like Oxycontin and similar prescription painkillers can most similarly be replicated by heroin. When addicts can’t get their hands on prescription medicine, heroin becomes the alternative.
Treichler worked in the sheriff’s department’s Drug Task Force from 2002 to 2006 and never saw a case dealing with heroin. Now there are consistently cases dealing with heroin, and the intravenous use of meth is being reported much more often.
"There remains a methamphetamine problem, but when it comes to heroin, there has been a significant increase in the discovery of heroin," Treichler said, adding that it hasn’t been to the degree locally as what is being seen in Anoka and Hennepin counties.
"But we’re definitely seeing an increase in overdoses and drug seizures. Six or seven years ago we were never seeing heroin in Wright County or responding to overdoses. Now we’re seeing it almost every week."
The sheriff’s office is working on education and awareness as a way to help combat the problem, letting parents, students and the general public know that while they may not see it for themselves, the hard drug epidemic has shown signs of returning.
Treichler said the sheriff’s department continues to investigate and try to flush out those in the drug trade. However, just as the problem didn’t go away a decade ago when the laws changed, if there is money to be made trafficking drugs, whenever one dealer goes down there is a new dealer ready to take his place.
"I don’t know if you’ll ever get a true handle on something that enough people want to possess," Treichler said. "We always go after the biggest sources we know to get the biggest bang for our resource dollar. We’re probably never going to rid Wright County of all drugs or arrest our way out of the problem. It’s got to be a multi-faceted approach of law enforcement, education and public awareness."
Hagerty doesn’t believe the meth and/or heroin problem will reach the critical mass that it did a decade ago. But his job is to protect the citizens of Wright County from crime, and the drug traffickers that move product in the county are a dangerous bunch.
The sheriff is realistic enough to know that society will never be 100-percent drug-free. But he hopes that through his officers on the street and more awareness among the public that although the problem is rising again, they can put up a good fight against it.
"We know that we can’t stop all drug movement and use," Hagerty said. "But our job is to protect the citizens of Wright County. There are some really bad people that move that product and our job is to keep our eyes open to anything that puts up a red flag.
"Any dent we can make in the problem is good thing as far as we’re concerned, and we’re going to keep shedding a light on it so people know that it is still a problem in Wright County."