We suspect many readers have grown tired of us talking about methamphetamine.
We share that sentiment. We’ll be thrilled to stop writing about meth when Indiana takes meaningful action to effectively reduce the drug’s scourge on Hoosiers.
A new report over the weekend shows Noble County ranks second among Indiana’s 92 counties in the number of meth labs seized in the first six months of this year — with 35.
Local people might be growing numb to an endless parade of similar statistics, year after year.
Sunday, we reported on a less-publicized way that meth harms innocent people who have nothing to do with making or using it.
KPC reporter Steve Garbacz revealed information about the number of homes that have been ruined by meth — and how fewer than half of them have been cleaned for safe occupancy.
In recent years, meth “cooks” have contaminated more than 400 homes across the four counties of northeast Indiana. Only 115 of them have been certified as fit for habitation after proper cleaning.
That leaves more than 300 homes that likely are abandoned or being neglected. Owners often walk away from them because it can cost $5,000 or more to remove contamination left by the chemicals used in making meth.
Those homes now are creating unsightly nuisances, dragging down property values in their neighborhoods. Some of them may have been in deteriorating condition before meth cooks moved in, but now they’re likely worse, each burdened with a serious obstacle to anyone who might think of improving them.
The prospect of meth contamination looms as a discouragement to investors who provide rental housing.
We hope all those contaminated homes remain vacant until they are cleaned, because the worst outcome would be having them avoid detection, allowing families and perhaps small children to move into their poisoned atmospheres.
All that said, the economic consequences of meth-tainted homes still pales in comparison to the human costs. Many children are living in meth-tainted homes that have yet to be discovered by police, with their parents actively making and using the drug.
Few other drugs can match meth for the complete ruination of the lives of its users. Few can match meth’s overwhelming addictive nature that make it so dangerous to try the drug even one time.
Hoosiers already have plenty of reasons to demand that our leaders take stronger action to fight meth — including a law that would require a prescription to buy large quantities of a key ingredient, the cold medicine pseudoephedrine.
The trail of houses ruined by meth, scarring the landscape of northeast Indiana, is not the most important reason to raise our response to the drug — it’s just one more among many.