State police: Increasingly dangerous meth makes up majority of lab tests

Methamphetamine submissions are now making up a majority of the cases sent to the Kentucky State Police for forensic lab tests.

Lab supervisor Jeremy Triplett tells WKYT Investigates the increasingly dangerous drug now makes up 51 percent of submissions.

"Now it's so pure that if we were to test the way we used to, it would overload our instruments, so we've had to change the way we actually do scientific testing to account for how pure it is," Triplett said.

Triplett has been at the lab for about ten years, and he has noticed a change in the meth the state's crime lab receives.

"We used to refer to some of it as peanut butter meth because it was so sticky and brown and hard to scoop out of the bags," Triplett recalled. "That's a far cry from the meth we see today, which is crystalline and colorless."

More than 400 police agencies across Kentucky send drugs from crimes to the forensic lab. Last year, the lab tested 27,000 submissions. Triplett points to 2016 to when numbers started to spike.

"It used to be western. It was just western Kentucky that had meth. It's really progressed eastward and has taken over the whole state. I don't know why, but it's certainly a trend to note."

Below is a chart showing the rise in meth submissions.