West Virginia was being overrun by toxic meth labs. By July, police had busted 300 of the clandestine labs – more labs than in all of 2012. The meth labs were poisoning children, setting off fires and explosions, contaminating apartments, homes and businesses. State officials declared the dramatic increase in meth production a “public health crisis,” but those same officials were at a loss to explain the problem’s causes and costs. Until Charleston Gazette reporters started digging. Staff writers Eric Eyre and David Gutman found that Walmarts, Rite Aids and other stores in West Virginia were selling extraordinary quantities of cold medications that criminals use to make illegal methamphetamine, helping to fuel the state’s meth lab epidemic. The reporters also uncovered that meth lab cleanup claims were gutting the West Virginia Crime Victims Compensation Fund – a special account set up to help victims of violent crimes. Instead, an increasing share of the crime victims fund was going to clean up West Virginia’s meth mess. West Virginia was the only state in the nation to reimburse meth lab claims through a crime victims fund. In some counties, every penny paid out of the fund went to cleaning up meth labs. To nail down the stories, Gazette reporters obtained a database – never before accessed by the media – that showed store-by-store sales of medications containing pseudoephedrine, a key meth-making ingredient. The cold medicine is sold under brand names such as Sudafed and Claritin-D.
