Meth In Effingham - Catching the Meth Heads

Crank, hillbilly crack, rocket fuel, ice. All street slang for meth.

Now more than a drug, cops say it's an epidemic. More prevalent, more dangerous every day.

The problem is so bad in one of our own counties, it's even gotten a nickname, "Meth-ingham."

Investigators in Effingham county are fighting that moniker, and fighting the drug one day at a time, one Meth lab at a time.

This year alone, deputies have taken down 16 labs with more than 570 grams of Meth inside, worth more than 68-thousand dollars.

65 people have been arrested, another 100 arrests still pending.

"When the economy gets bad and folks get down on their luck, they look for that," says Effingham County Sheriff Jimmy McDuffie.

That according to Sheriff McDuffie, is Meth.

"A lot of our burglaries a lot of our thefts, if you follow them back they are related to Meth," explained McDuffie.

He believes at least a third of the department's time is spent dealing with the drug and its users.

"As long as I'm sheriff and there's a will there's a way we're going to combat it left and right," said an adamant McDuffie.

One of the people on the front lines, Investigator Steve Blunt.

"You see it on the news like there is so much of it here we are just falling over it," said Blunt. "When in fact he's given us the time and tools to eradicate it."

Blunt hits the streets every day. His job to take the Meth out of Effingham.

"99% of them are not cooking to sell to my kid on the playground," explained Blunt. "They are cooking for their own use and their friends and family's use."

But that doesn't mean these cooks aren't getting tricky. Especially when it comes to buying the main ingredient, cold Pills with Ephedra.

Since there is a federal limit on how many pills one person can buy, Meth heads have to find new ways to get their fix.

"They are paying people anywhere from $25-80 a box to go buy it for them," said Blunt.

That's why Blunt comes to grocery stores and pharmacies around the entire area, not just Effingham, every week. To pick up lists of everyone who has bought a box.

"I got to the point I could look down for a particular brand and then look over at the name," said Blunt. "99% of the time it was someone who was shopping for Ephedra to make Meth. Probably one out of every 100 on these lists are somebody who using it to make Meth. I already see one now."

He digs through hundreds if not thousands of names, both on paper and through the computer, then putting them all in a database of possible offenders.

Blunt says this tedious work pays off. He's arrested almost 100 people in his career, most thanks to this list.

"Its almost become an obsession with me about tracking these people down," said a defiant Blunt. "They should know by now they are going to get caught."

Deputies aren't alone when it comes to this battle. Clerks inside stores like Kroger are actually looking for people buying the drugs and making sure they aren't using them for illegal purposes.

"They have my cell phone and I get calls all hours of the night," said Blunt. "I think this person does do it or I have a list of the people I look for, and they find them. They don't want to sell to these people, but I tell them go ahead and sell to them because I'm going to catch them."

Blunt has more than 100 people on his watch list, and because many of the meth heads now know better than to buy in Effingham, he has started keeping tabs on all the surrounding counties' lists.

Just as investigators get better tools and techniques, the meth cooks are, too.