RCMP on P.E.I. take a meth lab to the home show

Visitors at the PEI Provincial Home Show in Charlottetown this weekend might be surprised by one of the displays — a small methamphetamine lab.

RCMP have set it up at their booth, as part of a new awareness campaign around the drug.

"We'll be out doing lectures to retailers, to pharmacies, to other partners in addictions," said Cpl. Andy Cook, who heads up the program. "Out to schools, wherever we can go to get the message out about methamphetamine and about methamphetamine labs and the dangers that are associated to both of them."

The campaign comes after a "one-pot" or backpack lab was discovered in Summerside in January.

That, Cook said, elevated the status of the already-existing problem with meth on the Island.

• Meth lab discovered in P.E.I., say police

The one-pot lab seizure was a first for the Island, and it's not a trend that Cook wants to see increase.

The labs are made up of chemicals found in regular household items, such as batteries, cold compresses, drain cleaner, and camp fuel.

Most one-pot labs use a pop bottle for the reaction vessel, a method Cook said is highly dangerous.

"You have a lot of incompatible reactions taking place in a small bottle that's not designed to house that reaction," he said. "So you have a gas being produced, if that gas is vented during the process you can have a rupture, and I describe the videos I've seen of ruptures as basically a flame thrower."

After the lab is discarded, the bottles are still dangerous.

"If you pick that bottle up you can reactivate it, and you can have a reaction start again inside of it and it can be a huge danger to the public," Cook said.

Many of the labs show up in rental properties, said Cook, and he spoke with a few concerned landlords at the home show.

"If you see that all together, or you see it all together in a backpack like this or a bag somewhere, that could be an indicator that this person is producing methamphetamine," said Cook, standing over the small lab.

"It's not safe for the public, it's not safe for the police or emergency responders. A backpack could end up in a school and nobody wants to see that."

Cook said methamphetamine was involved in about 75 per cent of the drug cases investigated by RCMP in the Prince district, his previous assignment, mostly due to the fact that it's been very cheap.

"We're tending to see a lot younger user-base for methamphetamine, which is very concerning," he said. "It's all the way down to the junior high level, which you know as a parent very much concerns me."

The display at the home show will run until closing on Sunday.