Fentanyl making headlines, but recent cases show meth still a problem in the Erie region

The chief detective of Warren County is pretty confident the 19-year-old woman he and others took into custody from her home in an unincorporated community between the City of Warren and the New York state line represented the largest methamphetamine-related arrest he's had on the job.

Warren County doesn't see the quantity of meth that drug investigators in larger areas like Erie and Jamestown, New York, typically see in their cases, Thomas Kibbey said. So it was a big deal, Kibbey said, when he and other members of the Warren County Drug Task Force, aided by other county, state and federal agencies, seized about 21 pounds of the drug from a residence in the first block of North Main Street in Russell on March 24.

The drugs, with an estimated street value of more than $80,000, were found, in boxes and totes and wrapped in green cellophane and wood-grain peel-and-stick shelf liner, in an investigation into methamphetamine sales that had gone on for about a year and a half. They led to the arrest of a 19-year-old Russell woman, Maelynne L. McCall, who was charged with drug delivery and possession and endangering the welfare of children and was jailed on $1 million bond.

A 4-year-old and two younger children were in the house at the time of the police search, and the 4-year-old was found in a room where some of the suspected meth was located, investigators wrote in McCall's criminal complaint.

Fentanyl, a high-powered synthetic opioid that has taken a foothold in the Erie region in recent years, has attracted a lot of attention lately because of the number of drug overdoses and overdose deaths attributed to its use.

But drug investigators throughout northwestern Pennsylvania say meth continues to be prevalent, and in some communities remains the dominant drug for sellers and users.

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Erie Bureau of Police drug investigators said meth has taken a backseat to fentanyl in the drug cases they have investigated. But it is still around, they say, because, like fentanyl, the drug is relatively inexpensive for dealers to obtain and can be sold at a good profit on the street.

"It is still definitely our most popular narcotic," said Dustin LeGoullon, the public safety director for Titusville, the Crawford County city where authorities have said meth-making was first introduced locally in the 1990s.

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Titusville police recently made an arrest in a drug buy-and-bust case in which investigators seized 4 ounces of meth and a small amount of suspected heroin, LeGoullon said.

"That's kind of the ratio we have been seeing. Heroin is there, but it's just in such a small portion compared to meth," he said.

A wave of imports

Two days after investigators searched McCall's house in Russell, the Westfield, New York, police department and the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office were sent to a residence in Westfield to check on the well-being of two children.

Officers and sheriff's deputies found in the residence materials suspected of being used to manufacture methamphetamine. A subsequent search led to the seizure of nearly 7 grams of meth, a quantity of suspected fentanyl and items investigators believe were used in the distribution of narcotics, the sheriff's office reported.

Three people are facing charges including unlawful manufacture of methamphetamine in the drug investigation.

Chautauqua County Sheriff James Quattrone admitted that it was unusual to have a drug case in which suspects are accused of making meth, given that drug investigators say the practice has virtually disappeared in the region.

In the years immediately following the introduction of meth-making in northwestern Pennsylvania, law enforcement raided a number of large-scale manufacturing operations on property in and around Erie County and arrested a number of people accused of taking part in the cooking.

Meth-making then transitioned into something on a smaller scale, as authorities started finding "one-pot" labs, pop bottle-sized portable devices used to cook the drug.

Those have also largely disappeared as area drug investigators say the meth they encounter now is being shipped into the country in large quantities and is being sold.

Investigators with Pennsylvania State Police Troop E, which covers Erie, Crawford, Venango and Warren counties, are still seeing big quantities of meth being shipped into the region from out of state, said Lt. Mark Weindorf, crime section supervisor for the troop.

"Often we're seeing meth and fentanyl together, which was not often the case in the past," Weindorf said.

Methamphetamine was the second-largest by pounds, behind processed marijuana, and the fourth-largest by value, behind processed marijuana, cocaine and fentanyl, of all the illegal drugs seized by the Pennsylvania State Police statewide in 2022, the agency reported.

Several years ago, when "one-pot" cooks were seemingly rampant in parts of northwestern Pennsylvania, drug investigators in Warren County were pretty busy working those cases, Kibbey said.

"Luckily we haven't seen them since then. We haven't seen any cooking operations because the price is so low," he said.

But as the recent investigations in Russell and Westfield showed, meth isn't showing any signs of going away.

Contact Tim Hahn at thahn@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNhahn.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Methamphetamine keeps presence in Erie region as recent busts attest