PATROLMEN SEEK TOUGHTER ANTI-METH LAWS

Sadly, Missouri has emerged this last decade among the leading states in production, distribution and usage of methamphetamines. This amounts to a terrible scourge on our people, devastating lives and overwhelming both local law enforcement and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

A few years back, the Missouri Legislature passed into law a measure described at the time as the toughest anti-meth law in the nation.

Now, with several more years' experience under their belts, two area highway patrolmen who are on the front lines of the meth battle have some suggestions as to corrective legislation, and they have the ear of at least one state lawmaker.

Missouri Trooper Aaron Harrison is spending lots of time battling meth. Harrison first saw up-close the perils of meth when working as a paramedic in Joplin, Mo. in 1992. Harrison would arrive at the scene of a meth lab that had exploded, maiming the producers.

Now, after three years on the patrol, he has stepped up his battle, and calculates that just this year he had shut down about 30 meth labs and gathered information on many more for the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force.

Together with Sgt. Reggie Walker, Harrison has approached state Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, with suggestions for changes in Missouri's law. Armed with their testimony, Kinder has drafted and prefiled two bills that attempt, as he puts it, "to stiffen the terms for those at the top of the food chain: the meth cooks."

Under one bill, thefts of bulk amounts of anhydrous ammonia would become class A felonies punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison or life imprisonment.

The other one creates the crime of possession of anhydrous ammonia in an unapproved container and makes it a class D felony.

As things stand now, Harrison says of the meth cooks, "They're back out cooking before I'm done with the paperwork." Harrison says he has shared his ideas for this legislation with the meth cooks with whom he talks on a daily basis. "All of them say they would leave the state if it passed," said Harrison.

Good. Let's pass these measures and drive some more of these miscreants out of Missouri.