New Site for Meth Labs: Inside Cars

Police are discovering that it’s a lot harder to bust a meth lab when it’s in someone’s backseat. Meth users and dealers have discovered a new way of making the drug that requires just one pot rather than a big setup, meaning it can be done in the backseat of a car, cops in Elkhart, Indiana, tell the New York Times. They’ve been finding the equipment strewn along the side of the road.

“The way to get rid of your meth lab these days is to put it in a plastic bag, then throw it out the car window,” says one investigator. That litter has alerted authorities to the enormity of the problem—meth lab seizure statistics have ballooned around the country. “We just drive around, and off to the side of the road, there’s one, there’s one, and there’s another,” said an undersheriff from Kalamazoo, Michigan. (More meth labs stories.)