Cliff Markley will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
"As far as dope related its thirty years," Markley said from inside the county jail, "And other stuff, an additional 33."
He's only 23 but his addiction to methamphetamine started over a decade ago.
"About nine years old is when started, started snorting it. Started smoking it off foil at age 13, started running it at age 16," Markely said.
This past month the Pocahontas county sheriff's department has been busy tracking manufacturers like Markley.
"We've had three separate labs and we've filed charges on two of them," said Pocahontas Sheriffs deputy Steve Nelson.
Merkley was arrested on May 22nd in Rolfe after a meth lab was discovered in a garage. The same day two of his friends, Randal Knuths and Jerry Schoon were arrested for an active lab inside a house in nearby Pocahontas. Just two weeks later another friend David Dayton was arrests in Rolfe when police discovered pieces of a lab in his closet.
"They all know each other, they all ran around each other when they were younger," said Pocahontas sheriff Robert Lampe, "One of them has told me we're all a family."
Cliff's "family" traditions come with no remorse.
"In my head some of the stuff I do I don't really regret. I don't feel what I do is wrong. I try not to cook around kids or smoke it around children. I've got kids of my own, I wouldn't want to smoke it around them," Markley said.
"This is a viscous, viscous drug. I've been doing this for 23 years and this is a drug that's just not going away," Lampe said.
In 2004, when Iowa was officially tagged as the meth capitol of the world, lawmakers passed a law to crack down on the sale of pseudoephedrine-a key ingredient in manufacturing meth. The common cold medicine was pulled from shelves and required everyone who purchased it to sign a log sheet. The number of meth labs began to decline until drug makers got clever.
"There's been a rise in the meth labs because of the pseudoephedrine, we call it smurfing, where you go from store to store and buy," Lampe said.
Lampe wishes the recent string of meth labs were isolated incidents, but they're not.
"Here in the past six months to a year we've started to see a gradual incline of smaller meth labs here in Iowa," said Kevin Frampton with the Iowa division of narcotics enforcement.
"The people that make meth in Iowa anyway, they're putting a big push on it to make as much as they can before the pseudoephedrine is tracked electronically," Nelson said.
Tracking where producers were buying ingredients proved difficult but a new law which went into effect July 1st will eventually require places which sell pseudoephedrine to track sales digitally, allowing retailers to communicate sales electronically.
"I think its going to slow down some of the local traffic and probably the traffic between Webster county," Lampe said.
Markley calls the new system wishful thinking.
"Too many people get hooked on it. They give it to the next guy, they're giving it to the next guy, they're teaching the next person how to cook and the next person," Markley said.
"As far as dope related its thirty years," Markley said from inside the county jail, "And other stuff, an additional 33."
He's only 23 but his addiction to methamphetamine started over a decade ago.
"About nine years old is when started, started snorting it. Started smoking it off foil at age 13, started running it at age 16," Markely said.
This past month the Pocahontas county sheriff's department has been busy tracking manufacturers like Markley.
"We've had three separate labs and we've filed charges on two of them," said Pocahontas Sheriffs deputy Steve Nelson.
Merkley was arrested on May 22nd in Rolfe after a meth lab was discovered in a garage. The same day two of his friends, Randal Knuths and Jerry Schoon were arrested for an active lab inside a house in nearby Pocahontas. Just two weeks later another friend David Dayton was arrests in Rolfe when police discovered pieces of a lab in his closet.
"They all know each other, they all ran around each other when they were younger," said Pocahontas sheriff Robert Lampe, "One of them has told me we're all a family."
Cliff's "family" traditions come with no remorse.
"In my head some of the stuff I do I don't really regret. I don't feel what I do is wrong. I try not to cook around kids or smoke it around children. I've got kids of my own, I wouldn't want to smoke it around them," Markley said.
"This is a viscous, viscous drug. I've been doing this for 23 years and this is a drug that's just not going away," Lampe said.
In 2004, when Iowa was officially tagged as the meth capitol of the world, lawmakers passed a law to crack down on the sale of pseudoephedrine-a key ingredient in manufacturing meth. The common cold medicine was pulled from shelves and required everyone who purchased it to sign a log sheet. The number of meth labs began to decline until drug makers got clever.
"There's been a rise in the meth labs because of the pseudoephedrine, we call it smurfing, where you go from store to store and buy," Lampe said.
Lampe wishes the recent string of meth labs were isolated incidents, but they're not.
"Here in the past six months to a year we've started to see a gradual incline of smaller meth labs here in Iowa," said Kevin Frampton with the Iowa division of narcotics enforcement.
"The people that make meth in Iowa anyway, they're putting a big push on it to make as much as they can before the pseudoephedrine is tracked electronically," Nelson said.
Tracking where producers were buying ingredients proved difficult but a new law which went into effect July 1st will eventually require places which sell pseudoephedrine to track sales digitally, allowing retailers to communicate sales electronically.
"I think its going to slow down some of the local traffic and probably the traffic between Webster county," Lampe said.
Markley calls the new system wishful thinking.
"Too many people get hooked on it. They give it to the next guy, they're giving it to the next guy, they're teaching the next person how to cook and the next person," Markley said.
