In addition to its other important social functions, law enforcement is a critical part of both the prevention and education and the treatment components of an integrated strategy to address methamphetamine. Rural communities, in which methamphetamine manufacture and use are growing problems, pose special challenges. Limited law enforcement resources tend to be stretched thin already. As a result, rural law enforcement agencies often have difficulties dealing with arrestees requiring detoxification and other services, as well as with the environmental and safety problems associated with clandestine laboratories. Communities have different kinds of methamphetamine problems, requiring different solutions.
Communities vary in how methamphetamine problems manifest themselves.
These variations make necessary locally based responses in which law enforcement, criminal justice, and other efforts are sensitive to the unique and shifting traits of the local community and the methamphetamine problem. Some communities have serious methamphetamine problems, while in others the problem is less prominent. In addition, communities differ in how methamphetamine is introduced and popularized and in how it is produced and distributed. Law enforcement agencies can help prevent a methamphetamine problem that is just arriving or has not yet arrived. In communities on the verge of incurring a significant methamphetamine problem, the most effective community response will incorporate preemptive activities by law enforcement agencies.