Three-month investigation examines meth labs in east Tenn.

About one-third of all methamphetamine labs reported nationwide in 2009 were in Tennessee, and the state ranked second to Missouri in the number of reported labs. In a five-day series, the Knoxville News-Sentinel examined the problem ravaging east Tennessee, discovering despite the recent crackdown on meth in the state that meth cooks have simply adopted the "shake-and-bake" method to go around restrictions. "I've made it every way there is, and I've never bought a thing," Jason Thomas, a convicted meth cook, told Matt Lakin. "I can make it anytime I want."

The newspaper's three-month investigation reveal meth cooks have simply recruited others to buy the drug's key ingredient, psuedoephedrine, after the state moved it behind pharmacy counters. While meth abuse used to be a distinctly rural problem in Tennessee, now some cities see more cases in a month than rural areas see in a year, the News-Sentinel reports. "Roughly two-thirds of the old labs still sit empty, unused and unfit for human habitation," Lakin writes. "The state can quarantine property, but it can't force a cleanup." The investigation also revealed some labs are never quarantined, meaning homes across the state can "sit seeping poison," unknown to future residents. (Photo of two grams of meth by Brimer)

The five-day series from Lakin and Adam Brimer also examined the drugs' cost to families in the state and its toll on Tennessee's children. Ten east Tennessee counties accounted for over one-third of the 9,000-plus meth lab busts statewide in the past decade, Lakin writes, with nine of those counties being clustered just off Interstate 75. Still state law enforcement says the problem is no longer a rural one. "When all this started, everybody kept comparing it to moonshining and calling it a hillbilly drug," Tommy Farmer, director of the state meth task force, told Lakin. "But just because you don't have meth lab seizures in your area doesn't mean you don't have a meth problem. It's not moving west. It was already there. We're just doing a better job of going out and getting them."

You can read the index of the entire series here.