Meth Still A Problem In Minnesota
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- Brian Fitch Sr. was collecting on methamphetamine debts when he shot and killed Mendota Heights police officer Scott Patrick last July.
Just this week David Winter, who engaged St. Louis Park police in a shootout near a popular grocery store, was known to law enforcement as someone who made meth.
It is also the drug that was behind a recent electronics theft ring in Grand Forks that traded stolen merchandise for methamphetamine in the Twin Cities.
"If there's any perception out there, that meth is no longer a problem, it still is," Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said.
Choi said that after a brief decline around 2010, meth remains Minnesota's illicit drug of choice. It is especially a problem in outstate counties where there are fewer resources to attack both the manufacture and use of the drug.
"Across the state of Minnesota, if there's a drug of people being convicted of felonies, its methamphetamine," Choi said.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, since 2010 the nation's number of methamphetamine users is up sharply. Confirmed use has risen from 353,000 users in 2010 to some 595,000 in 2013. That is an increase of more than 60 percent.
"I was a daily user," said former meth addict, Derrick.
He has been clean now for nearly a year.
"On the days I didn't use or have my drugs, I was sleeping, but as soon as I was rested I was back," Derrick said.
He is getting help at Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge. Staff there is well aware of the drug's highly addictive nature and how those manufacturing and selling it will find a way to get it to their customers.
"There's different ways people are creating it and manufacturing it," said Teen Challenge program director Adam Pederson. "We need to discover them and find ways to curb it."