Fresh Loaf

If so, you’re screwed.

A frightening story in today’s New York Times explores the toxic toll on families who — unbeknownst to them — moved into former meth houses.

“The meth lab home problem is only going to grow,” said Dawn Turner, who started a Web site, www.methlabhomes.com, after her son lost thousands of dollars when he bought a foreclosed home in Sweetwater, Tenn., that turned out to be contaminated. Because less is known about the history of foreclosed houses, Ms. Turner said, “as foreclosures rise, so will the number of new meth lab home owners.”

It can cost $5,000 to $100,000 to decontaminate a former meth house. One Texas woman lost pretty much everything after buying one such home:

“It makes you crazy,” Ms. [Francisca] Rodriguez said. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”

Only one state, Colorado, provides federal funds to help innocent property owners clean up meth-infested homes. As for the Peach State …

In other states, like Georgia, landlords and other real estate owners have fought a proposed cleanup law.

Thanks, Georgia.

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One of the main ingredients in home-cooked meth is pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine is available in over-the-counter cold meds. As a result, meth is easy and cheap — if not always safe — to make. Meth is also wildly popular in Georgia and elsewhere, having transcended its reputation as “hillbilly cocaine” to become fashionable among the urban set.

Basically, something’s got to give.

Georgia lawmakers want to stem the production of meth by setting up a MethCheck Database. The MD would track the purchases of pseudoephedrine statewide. When someone buys too much Sudafed, he or she might end up on the database — and be arrested. (Fear not — the amount of Sudafed necessary to make a decent-sized batch of meth would far outweigh what the most sickly of cold-sufferers could possibly consume.)

The Georgia Senate’s MethCheck Database Study Committee will meet on tomorrow at the State Capitol, room 455, from 10 a.m.-noon to discuss this pressing matter. Should be interesting.

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