The Washington state Department of Licensing has pulled O&J Sales’ license after finding 22 cars were contaminated by methamphetamine, reports The Whidby News Times. The cars, worth $70,000, were crushed due to the high cost of cleaning them to state standards. And those high state standards (0.1 micrograms per 100 square centimeters, 15 times the California standard) are a cause of frustration for the lot’s owner. “If the standards were applied to every car dealership in the state, most of them would go out of business,” says O&J owner Mark Brown, noting that one of the crushed vehicles was bought from a state police auction. Unfortunately for Brown, his lot was raided in March, when police found 94 grams of meth. This led to the arrest of Brown’s son, the lot’s manager. The O&J building tested at 5,200 times the legal limit for meth on a swab test. The shutdown of O&J is the first meth contamination-based closure on record.
I think we need to do something about the cocaine contamination on US bills. If we find a tenth of a microgram on a bill, it must be torched. Oh, that would mean we would probably have to torch all or our paper money? Hey, we must be rid of this cocaine contamination! That tenth of a microgram is turning you into an addict!
The stupidity of drug laws in the US is truly beyond belief. Destroying people’s livelihoods is not a good way to keep them off drugs, and destroying cars due to “meth contamination” is worse than a bad joke, especially when the police are selling these same cars.
in many parts of the country, especially among native american and eskimo populations, sniffing gasoline is a popular way to get high. we need to crush all cars with detectable levels of gasoline.
Ordinarily I would agree with your sentiments, Adamatari, but apparently meth contamination has very serious health consequences. The NYT had an article about houses that held meth labs being cleaned and resold and causing serious respiratory harm to their hapless buyers. Although the news item doesn’t say what the levels were in the cars, I’d guess that prolonged use of a car that was stored inside a meth lab (which is what the dealership seems to have been) would expose the occupants to a world of hurt. I don’t think this is hysteria.
Here is the depressing link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14meth.html
his lot was raided in March, when police found 94 grams of meth.
Wow, a guy could have one hell of a weekend with that.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the used car business employs a fair share of those who are, shall we say, sympathetic to these behaviors.
Perhaps they should test all of the squad cars… it would be a shame if they all had to be sent to the crusher.
I have no sympathy for them.
Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we start to sponsor the clean up of all of these alleged meth-contaminated properties. We can fund this new program with the confiscated money, cars, property etc. that LEO takes from drug suspects when they are arrested.
Yeah, right. I crack myself up.
I sense a sponsorship opportunity!
The only reason they got caught…
…Jeremy Mayfield was one of their porters.
Meth labs exist because of drug prohibition. Let corporations sell coca derivatives cheap, and there will be no demand for meth.
“This led to the arrest of Brown’s son, the lot’s manager.” So the owner’s son was lighting up inside the new cars on the lot? I wonder what their customer satisfaction surveys were like.
There’s a strong anecdotal correlation between meth users and a-holes. There’s also a strong anecdotal correlation between car sales managers and a-holes. (Excluding TTAC readers, however.)
If A is to C as B is to C, is A the same as C? Seems likely, at least in the case of the younger Brown, here.
@ friedclams
There is no mention of the dealership being used as a meth lab; the article states contamination from meth itself, namely residue from it being smoked in and around the cars, spilled, etc.
Washington state is using the standard of the smallest amount that can be detected. Cali is using a much higher standard that purports to have a scientific basis to it.
It would not surprise me a bit if in fact there was nothing wrong with any of the cars and meth contamination is a knee-jerk OMGwe’reallgonnadie type thing, but I could well be wrong.
Okay, Googling around, checking Erowid and the DEA, all the discussion seems to be focused on the dangers of meth labs; I can’t find anything that suggests that meth itself is environmentally dangerous.
It’s beginning to look to me like dubious science along the lines of secondary tobacco smoke.
Twenty-two cars worth $70,000. Am I reading this right? That’s only $3,200 each.
Meth labs exist because of drug prohibition. Let corporations sell coca derivatives cheap, and there will be no demand for meth.
Drug addiction (largely) exists because of serious social and economic problems. Fix, or at least alleviate, the problems and the addiction and crime goes away.
Of course, that would seem, to some, to be condoning addiction. Can’t have that. So let’s lock’em and let’em rot instead. After all, social workers and nurses cost money, but police, jail guards and soldiers are free.
One of the more annoying developments out of the birth of modern social conservatism was the switcheroo of drugs and crime as symptoms of poverty, to drugs and crime as the cause of poverty, as well as indicator of a kind of lack of moral self-worth. It’s a bad thing, because it creates a culture of victimization where poverty and it’s symptoms are indicative of being a lower grade of person, instead of one where poverty is a problem to be fixed. It also, handily, externalizes the cost of systemic poverty.
Can you tell this bugs me?
(we now return you to your regularly-scheduled “What the hell were you thinking when you were getting high in a customer’s car” post)
It’s Poochie. (photo)
NeonCat93: Have it your way, the meth levels as tested inside the building are only ~350x the more “sensible” California limit, rather than 5200x that of Washington’s. That seems me, admittedly a layman, like a very high environmental level to be created by the mere use of the drug.
I admit that meth levels inside the cars are not mentioned, and that we have no proof other than the high test levels that the dealership was actually used as a meth lab. They erred on the side of caution here, which I still think was wise given the potential toxicity.
From a town that elected Marion Barry mayor…after his crack and hooker arrests
friedclams:
Great article. I don’t think it goes deep enough though – it’s well known that MAKING meth requires lots of nasty chemicals, but I find it very hard to believe that mere tenths of micrograms of meth itself are going to destroy your health. Not to say that meth isn’t dangerous, but pure meth is active in milligrams and closely related drugs are used in inhalers… So I’m thinking it’s the other chemicals that are the problem. Presence of meth (especially meth in quantity) is probably a good indicator that other, much worse chemicals may be found (related to meth synthesis, or maybe impurities?), but micrograms of meth in a used car left over from when someone smoked in it probably aren’t going to hurt anyone. Not that I want a meth head’s used car, but still.
I doubt most lawmakers know enough about drugs to realize that it’s the chemicals involved in the synthesis (or possibly impurities) rather than the meth itself that are a contamination risk (at least at that level).
I saw this article this morning; maybe I’m the one who first alerted TTAC to it. I think there are a couple of lessons here. First, don’t buy a used car lot for your son if he’s a meth-head. Second, don’t buy a car at a state auction unless the state certifies it free of meth, cocaine, and other substances that can get you busted later on. A lot of these are vehicles that have been seized from drug dealers.
My state of Washington – the real Washington, that is, not Marion Berry’s former mayordom – does have a serious problem with meth labs because it has a lot of wooded areas close to population centers. I don’t think that’s an excuse for a requirement that any detectable amount of the stuff makes a car unfit for sale or use. It probably comes from the paranoia about chemicals in general that our society has adopted in the last few years.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply, Adamatari. You’re probably right that meth itself is less of an environmental hazard that the chemicals that create it. I was assuming the dealership actually was a meth lab based on the tested high levels.
Seeing as how the meth problem isn’t going away, it would be good to know if there are ambient hazards involved in its use as opposed to manufacture. But I share other posters’ hopelessness about getting intelligent policy that protects the public from any chemical risks, let alone the political hot-potato of illegal drugs.
Another angle on this would be that the dealership was being used to launder the cash from drug sales.
A BHPH lot would be great cover.
I live outside of Olympia, WA. and Meth is a big issue around here.
Probably a good thing those cars were crushed, given Washington is a border state. Heaven help the hapless buyer of such a car who has nothing to do with drugs but tries one day to drive across the border.