Last week Montana’s Republican Sen. Steve Daines hosted a roundtable in Missoula to talk with police and prosecutors about the devastating toll methamphetamine is taking on western Montana. The event also offered a revealing look at the business end of the meth trade.
Local meth-cooking operations are generally an anomaly. Home brew labs are certainly dangerous and toxic, but account for a fraction of the meth supply on Montana’s streets.
“The vast majority of drugs into American and into Montana – especially meth – is coming from Mexico,” according to Missoula City Police Detective Guy Baker.
Baker says that’s been the case ever since the United States restricted consumer access to several so-called ‘precursors,’ or the base ingredients, used to make meth.