He was dealing drugs when a friend offered him a new kind of high. So I snorted a little bit. You just wanted this stuff, more and more and more. Most methamphetamine used in the Upper Midwest is imported from California. But increasingly, people are setting up their own manufacturing labs, especially in rural areas.
Somebody can set up a lab in an abandoned farmhouse and pretty much go undetected.
John Schneider is the US attorney for North Dakota. He says until two years ago law enforcement had busted one meth lab in the history of North Dakota. Since then a dozen labs have been found. Federal officials say 26 labs were raided in Minnesota last year. The recipes for putting methamphetamine together are on the Internet, and the precursor chemicals are readily available.