Renting a hotel or motel room popular with meth lab cooks

Renting a hotel or motel room is becoming an increasingly popular activity among meth lab cooks, who understand the advantages of using a rented room as a drug lab.

Renting a motel or hotel room for a night or even for a few hours helps meth cooks to avoid triggering neighbors suspicions about their illegal drug activities. If they don’t cook meth in their own home, there’s no chance that a neighbor will smell anything unusual coming from their house, right?

Cooking meth in a rented room also protects them from having their own home seized by law enforcement, who can legally seize assets associated with drug offenses. Police can’t seize the motel or hotel though – it doesn’t belong to the meth cook.

If meth cooks don’t use their own home to make meth, then the problem of paying for the cleanup disappears – for them. Hotel and motel owners will pay anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 to get a rented room decontaminated after a meth lab bust, though.

Making meth in a rented motel or hotel room further protects their family from being exposed to toxic chemicals.

Once the meth is cooked, then motel and hotel rooms can then be used as a store front for meth users who want to buy their finished product.  Meth cooks know that strangers coming to motel or hotel rooms typically don’t send up red flags for anyone who might be watching.

The DEA reports that 1,789 motel and hotel rooms have been used as meth labs over the last five years, but meth lab cleanup experts say there are thousands more that haven’t been reported.  Joe Mazucca, owner of Methlab Cleanup Company, the largest cleanup contracting firm in the U.S.,  suggests that DEA reports show only the tip of the iceburg. Mazucca says that nearly 70% of the meth contaminated properties that his company deals with have never been busted or reported.

So what does this mean for the vacationing family or business traveler?

John Martyny, Associate Professor and an industrial hygienist at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, says that spending one night in a meth lab may not cause you any serious consequences, but no one really knows what the long term or cumulative effects are yet. But, what happens when you are a business traveler who rents motel and hotel rooms on a frequent basis? And what happens to you and your young family’s health after you rent a room that’s contaminated for a couple weeks for a family vacation? No one really knows.

Studies do say however that the chemicals used to make meth are particularly dangerous to young children whose bodies and brains are still developing and pregnant women. If you’re a woman whose pregnant or think you might be pregnant, studies say that you are at an increased risk of premature labor and detachment of the placenta. Your unborn baby may also be subject to having a low birth weight and could suffer neurological damage from exposure to the toxic chemicals that contaminate every surface inside of a room or home that’s been used as a meth lab. Toddlers and young children, who are more apt to spend time on the floor and touch furniture and other objects in a room, are also at higher risk of inhaling or ingesting toxic residues, which studies say puts them at an increased risk of health problems that can affect their respiratory systems and their developing brains.

Motel and hotel owners aren’t happy about their new found popularity with meth lab cooks. In fact, the problem is a major discussion point in the industry. If a meth lab bust occurs at one of their establishments, they are required by the state to decontaminate it, in most cases. Cleanup mandates for rental property are still being discussed in cities, towns, and states all across the U.S. If no law requires them to have the room professionally decontaminated, many motel and hotel owners may ask hotel and motel house cleaners to “clean” the room instead, which puts the health of those employees at risk of becoming ill. Hotel and motel owners may even have someone paint the room thinking that will take care of the contamination problem. It doesn’t.

Meth lab toxins permeate every surface and every item inside of a motel or hotel room, including the ventilation system, furniture, lamps, etc. Basically, like homeowners, motel and hotel owners are often left with little choice but to gut the room, rebuild it, and replace all of the furniture and other items that have been contaminated. Motel and hotel owners aren’t apt to volunteer to do that if their staff discovers the remains of a meth lab in one of their rooms. With nearly 70% of all meth labs escaping the discovery of law enforcement, the risks to public health is a serious and expensive problem that is likely to continue, until government funding becomes available to motel and hotel owners. Until then, owners have little incentive to do the “right thing” and decontaminate rooms even if drug enforcement agents never found out that a meth lab cook had taken place it them.

If you suspect that someone is making meth in the motel or hotel that you’re staying in:

DO NOT CONTACT THEM OR DRAW THEIR ATTENTION TO YOU! CALL THE POLICE!

Meth cooks are likely to make meth when they know others in the motel / hotel are fast asleep, say between midnight and 4 a.m. Using meth allows them to go without sleep, in some cases for as long as two weeks straight.  But, denying the body sleep isn’t without consequences. The lack of sleep may cause them to have delusions,  hallucinate and become angry for reasons that wouldn’t bother a normal person.  Meth cooks are also highly prone to be violent which  makes them particularly dangerous to others considering the fact that most meth cooks also carry loaded guns.