The recent shutdown of a “meth house” yielding four arrests in Northern Kentucky was just one more sign of a changing drug scene, police say.

Crystal methamphetamine is inundating the illicit drug market, and it’s predicted to stay a while. Called ice by most users, it’s usually quite pure, and its price has come down this year, said Chris Conners, director of the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force.

“About three years ago, we were spending about $2,000 to $2,200 per ounce” for crystal meth, said Conners. “Now we’re paying $500 an ounce.”

“If the price is that low, that means the market is flooded,” he said.

Across Kentucky, nearly 500 law enforcement agencies seized more meth this year than any other drug. They racked up a 12.5 increase in meth submissions to Kentucky State Police crime labs, records show. The increase in meth seizures was second only to that of the deadly synthetic opiate fentanyl, at 16.5 percent more cases than in 2017. 

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration called out meth’s continued prevalence in its 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment.

And in Ohio, Interact for Health, the Norwood-based nonprofit health advocate noted that 1 in 10 Ohioans polled in 2017 knew someone who had a problem with meth.

Northern Kentucky’s Villa Hills police busted up a Crescent Springs-based meth house on a side street near Buttermilk Pike after monitoring activity for months. 

“There was more than one family staying there,” Police Chief Bryan Allen said, “and to stay there, you had to sell the meth.”

Kenton County SWAT and Villa Hills officers searched the Terra Cotta Avenue house on a warrant Nov. 26. Six people were inside. Allen said officers had hoped to place two children younger than 10 who had been seen at the house in protective custody, but the kids weren’t there when police arrived.

The police chief said the house was a site of drug trafficking and use.

The meth was sold at nearby BP and Sunoco gas station lots, he said. 

Police found bags of suspected methamphetamine, glass pipes, scales, suspected heroin residue in a bottle cap and pills not in proper containers.

Rachel Elisha Heger, 45, and Steven Lee Lienhart, 47, who lived there, were charged with trafficking meth, heroin possession, and two other lesser possession charges, according to police records. 

Krista Rae Cortez, 38, of Covington, and Anthony Wayne Thompson, 33, of Price Hill, were each charged with possession of methamphetamine.

District Court Judge Ann Ruttle put Cortez into Kenton County’s Heroin Expedited Addiction Recovery Treatment program on Dec. 5, court records show. 

As of Dec. 12, Heger, Lienhart and Thompson were still in Kenton County’s jail awaiting trial.

The Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force started seeing a significant rise in meth on the streets a few years ago. The team wasn’t involved in the Crescent Springs case but has handled meth investigations that have yielded both state and federal charges.

“It’s probably still half our cases, but the seizures have increased in size,” Conners said.

From July 2017 through June 30 this year, his agents seized about 21 pounds of meth. The year before, the total was seven pounds, Conners said.

The drug’s purity has been consistently better over the past few years than when meth was made cheaply and locally by its traffickers and users in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Conners said.

“None of this is being cooked in barns in Northern Kentucky,” Conners said.

Federal agents say the meth in the United States today is largely coming from Mexico.

But the deadliest drug currently on the streets is the synthetic opiate fentanyl, according to officials including Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco.

The DEA noted in its drug threat assessment that fentanyl and its analogs, made by rogue chemists overseas, are exacerbating overdose deaths.

Conners said his agents haven’t seen a mix of crystal meth with fentanyl, although they’ve occasionally seized fentanyl during a meth investigation. Kentucky State Police crime lab analysts have seen the mix, an official there said.

Even as meth has risen, there’s been a dramatic drop in heroin submitted to the Kentucky crime labs, at 27 percent fewer cases. Conners said nearly all heroin his force seized in the past year has been tainted with fentanyl.

“The continued increase of fentanyl is disturbing,” said Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. “It would appear that the cartels are focused on fentanyl and methamphetamine as the main drugs they are importing.”

 

 

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