By Liz McMahan
All the components for a major meth-making lab were found Wednesday in a building behind the doublewide mobile home at 3710 E. Hancock St., officials said.
On the front porch were a motorcycle and charcoal grill. Three children’s bikes were turned over on the grass nearby.
Out back, in what looked like an everyday storage unit, officers found buckets — not bottles — of what is believed to be an iodine mixture. Pseudoephedrine, acetone and propane tanks also were found in the building, said officers of the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Drug Task Force.
“I’m thinking they were planning a pretty good-sized cook,” a task force officer said.
Officers learned the potential of a lab existed from clerks at a local store, who reported the property owner, Charles Richard Thompson, had purchased a quantity of pseudoephedrine on Tuesday. He had also bought several other items commonly used in methamphetamine production, a Drug Task Force member said.
Besides the pseudoephedrine and other chemicals, officers seized six bottles of HEET, eight bottles of hydrogen peroxide and four bottles of rubbing alcohol.
“And they weren’t the little bottles,” he said. “They were the large, economy size.”
Officers went to the residence about 11:55 a.m. Wednesday. A woman who lives there gave them permission to search the property, said Drug Task Force member Joe Hughart.
Thompson was not at home at the time, but may be charged with numerous felony counts because of the items found during the search, Hughart said.
While the Sheriff’s Office has put a lot of effort into breaking up drug-making operations in the county, drug labs continue to proliferate, another task force member said.
The Sheriff’s Office found 27 labs last year, and since the Drug Task Force was organized in December, had found a dozen or so.
“A lot of it is the economy,” a task force member said. “As the price has gotten higher, a lot of people are making their own and then selling the excess.”
State law has made it more difficult to obtain quantities of pseudoephedrine. However, if a drug maker gets three friends to each purchase the maximum quantity of the drug and they each send five friends out to do the same thing, that’s 60 packages of the drug, the officer said.
For each 48-count package, a meth lab can produce three or four grams of methamphetamine, the officers said.
Several of the items used for making methamphetamine can be reused, such as the iodine and muriatic acid, the task force member said. Other items, such as Drano, are inexpensive and easily obtained. Drug makers can invest $2 in those products and receive $250 to $500 for the drugs they make.
The lab discovered Wednesday is not the largest discovered by officers, but is the largest this year, the officer said. While many of them are not, this building was vented.
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