Ohio Amish Feel Impact of Meth

A scourge of rural Ohio has begun impacting the Wayne and Holmes County Amish community:

More than 150 Amish men and women filled a farm building this spring to learn about the chemical curse that is surrounding them. Methamphetamine, the drug peddled by outlaw bikers and street-corner dealers for decades, is on the rise in the land of the horse and buggy -- though no one caught with the drug in the area has been Amish.
The rural hills of Holmes and Wayne counties, about 90 minutes south of Cleveland, is a place where violent crime and major drug trafficking have seldom been a problem. Many associate the region with Ohio's largest Amish population, quilt shops and large family farms.
But beneath the idyllic setting is an underbelly of criminal cookers who have begun brewing the gritty, illicit stimulant into a growing drug of choice in a region that might be one of the last in the state to face the drug's scourge.

This is a more serious crime wave than Amish milk smugglers.  Luckily, none of the people caught with meth have been Amish, but the increased drug activity in the area has driven the Amish to meeting with police to understand the problem:

"The devil doesn't care where we live, whether in the city or in the country," said Ed Miller, an Amish general contractor from Apple Creek. "He seeks out the weakest. . . . There's a big concern about [methamphetamine.] We don't want that."
David Smith heads the Medway Drug Enforcement Agency, an anti-drug group that works mostly in Wayne, Holmes and Medina counties. In 2007, the agency dismantled one lab in the region. Last year, it cleaned up 17.

Meth producers have found rural areas to be good places to make the drug.  Meth, along with prescription drug abuse, is slowly growing to become nearly as damaging to rural communities as crack and heroin have been to inner cities.  Last month, the Summit County Sheriff warned highway cleanup volunteers to be careful about handling bottles used in backroad meth production.  This is an epidemic, which was highlighted in the book, Methland, which described the impact of methamphetamine around the community of Oelwein, Iowa.  It is sad how the drug destroys the lives of people so thoroughly.