Belknap County's hard drug scene: From one-pot to Post Office

LACONIA — Over the past few years, the city of Laconia has experienced significant shifts in illicit drug activity. The types of drugs, their origins, and even how users are policed has changed. Greater compassion for those suffering from addiction has led to an approach to policing that is hoped to be more effective.

Methamphetamine has likely seen the greatest shifts when it comes to production and distribution.

“Back in 2008, we had a lot of one-pot labs,” said Adam Batstone, a sergeant with the Belknap County Sheriff's Department. “They'd buy the pseudoephedrine from Walgreens, Gatorade bottles, acetone, and all these chemicals. They'd make meth in the trunk of their car or backpack. They'd carry it around with them.”

The rise of the one-pot labs came after the United States heavily regulated the sale of pseudoephedrine, a formerly over-the-counter cold medicine popular in meth recipes. The regulation forced meth cooks to create small batches, hence the name "one-pot."

“The potency depended on the cook,” Batstone explained. “It was a fairly intricate thing for what is a short process.”

As one could guess, most amateur meth cooks are not trained chemists, and having a volatile set of chemicals mixing in the trunk of a car or in a basement with nothing to hold it together but a plastic bottle at times spelled disaster.

“We shut down downtown once because they had a one-pot and ended up blowing it up with a water canon,” Batstone recalled, adding that the era of one-pot meth in the Lakes Region is over.

“I can't think of the last time of someone getting arrested or making one-pot methamphetamine,” Batstone said.

Despite hometown meth labs going out of style, Belknap County, and Laconia, still seems to be awash with the drug, and by most accounts, it's more pure and affordable than ever.

“People have this misconception that meth is being made in houses and basement, apartments and cars. Meth isn't being made by individual users anymore. It's all pretty much cartels,” said Laconia Police Detective Kendra Neri.

Laconia is not unique in this situation. Cartels have consolidated much of their distribution and production nationwide.

“They're using real chemists and labs and they're making it high yield. It's sort of like 'Breaking Bad,'” Neri said, referring to the AMC drama series. “They have these factories, and they're just bringing it up across the borders and getting it disseminated that way.”

Neri also stated that cartels have started relying more on the mail to distribute their product in Laconia.

“Our main way of meth getting into New Hampshire is the mail,” Neri said. “Between the postal service and FedEx, there are just too many packages going through. You can't check them all, so stuff is getting through, meth is getting through.”

When the meth inbound for Laconia is detected in the mail, it isn't in extremely large quantities, but still a significant amount for the area. “The operations I've been a part of in this area when DEA has seized a package of meth in the mail, it's usually two to four pounds,” Neri said.

For reference, when purchased in its crystal form, meth is often sold in increments of .10 grams. There are roughly 454 grams in a pound.

“That's a lot of meth right?” Neri asked.

In addition, some users are able to buy similar products from China via encrypted internet marketplaces. “A lot of people are using cryptocurrency and the dark web to get medicine over here. The purity is a lot better.”

While meth has long been a staple of the local drug scene, the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is a relatively new substance, taking Belknap County and America by storm. Often the drug is used in tandem with meth as a misguided attempt to balance the “upper” type high of amphetamines with the “downer” effect of opioids.

“Fentanyl does not counteract the methamphetamine, but in their mind, they think it does,” Neri said. “What fentanyl does is it basically signals your brain to slow down your heartbeat and slow down your breathing. People overdose when they take too much and your brain just tells your heart to stop beating.”

Fentanyl is the latest in a long line of drugs making up America's opioid epidemic, and is nearly 50 times more potent than heroin, making it extremely easy to overdose. This potency can also make the drug very attractive to users looking to kill their pain or avoid the symptoms of opioid withdraw.

“It's an instant relief for people whether they're suffering from physical or emotional pain,” Batstone said. “The other side of that coin is detox, it's sick flu-like symptoms that can last days. You see people shaking and physically ill.”

As law enforcement has gained greater understanding of drug users as individuals suffering from disease, they have re-trained their sights onto those profiting from the illness: drug dealers.

“Those are the people that need to be incarcerated and go to jail,” said Laconia Police Chief Mathew Canfield. “The same people who run the flop houses. They allow this to happen. They're allowing people at their most vulnerable time to be addicted to this stuff and continue using.”

In Laconia, some users have become more cooperative with police detectives since this approach was adopted.

“We stopped a gentleman and said 'Hey, what are you doing at so and so's house?,' and he goes, 'I was lookin' for stuff,'” recalled Detective Neri. “With the trend over the last few years that addiction is now considered a disease, I think you're losing that stigma.”

“The way we police in Laconia is certainly different than anywhere else in the state, probably New England with the advent of Detective Adams' Prevention Enforcement and Treatment program,” Canfield said, highlighting the work of Eric Adams, who regularly checks in with people in and out of recovery. “To my knowledge, we're the first police department to ever come up with that type of program and look at it as, hey, this is more of a problem than just an illegal drug. We can arrest, arrest and arrest, but is it going to solve anything? Is it going to save lives? It wasn't working,” Canfield said.

“That's where that human side of it comes into play as far as getting people into treatment and rehab, and maybe stopping that cycle with you or the people you influence, and then going after the people that are distributing the stuff and selling the stuff and making a profit.”