Jackson Free Press

Drug dealers and producers are getting smarter, says the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. The agency is seeing a rise lately in methamphetamine labs and in the numbers of cocaine investigations, reports WLBT.

Just this week a husband and wife in Warren County were sentenced for manufacturing meth in their home around their two young children. Last week in Flowood behind a business meth was found in a dumpster. From January to July of this year 223 meth labs were found in the state. In 2008, 149.

"They've adapted," MBN Director Marshall Fisher told WLBT. "The bad guys are good at adapting to whatever conditions they're presented with."

One example of their adaptation is finding ways around buying the minimum amount of pseudophedrin from stores. The antihistamine is a key ingredient for manufacturing meth, and one buyer is limited as to how much they can purchase.

"They go out in teams ... and they hit every pharmacy" in an area, a technique called "smurfing," Fisher told the station.

Drug dealers have also toned down their presentations.

"Some of them have gotten a lot smarter," Fisher said. "They're not nearly as flashy as they once were maybe. The smart ones."

Fisher also told WLBT that of the 104 drug overdose deaths statewide this year, prescription drugs—legal narcotics—accounted for the majority of those deaths.