By By TIM HAWSEY
Escambia County Sheriff
The crystal methamphetamine lab located Friday, May 18, close to Wolf Log Road near Flomaton makes the eighth such clandestine laboratory destroyed by the Twenty-First Judicial Drug Task Force this year.
It was only a couple of years ago we were hearing about meth labs in Hawaii and California and knew the day would come when it would make its way to us.
It scared me then, watching training tapes of entire trailers blowing up and victims burned severely because of the chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of this drug. It surely scares me now, knowing we now have this problem all over Escambia County. I am thankful that so far no one has been injured.
I want to commend the members of the task force on the great job they are doing in locating these crude but equally dangerous labs. I also want to commend Deputy David Clark and Investigator Monte McGougin on quickly realizing they had discovered such a lab on a routine repossession of a trailer.
One of the worries I have is deputies responding to basic law enforcement calls and not realizing they are around these caustic chemicals that can blow up with the turning on of a light switch.
We are working closely with our surrounding counties in Alabama and in Florida on these meth labs. Escambia County is not the only county with this problem.
All of the eight meth labs found in Escambia County have been of crude making. The term "lab" simply means the mixing of chemicals. Just because it is called a "meth lab" does not mean that it is sanitary.
Crystal methamphetamine is a cousin to cocaine and is abused in much the same fashion. Most addicts are either smoking or injecting it.
What a terrible life.