Cops: Cooking Meth with the Kids

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Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer

The meth epidemic continues to take a toll on families across the country. Parents have been arrested for allegedly driving under the influence of methamphetamines with their children in the car. A girl in Alabama was critically injured after drinking a soda bottle filled with chemicals police say a relative was using to make the highly addictive narcotic.

And now this: In Florida, investigators with the Sebastian Police Department believe the father of two young children was operating a methamphetamine lab in the back of the family’s home. The children, ages 3 and 7, are now in the custody of the state’s Department of Children and Families.

Their father is Paul Arnold Wolff. The 30-year-old suspect is charged with manufacturing methamphetamine and possession of a short barrel shotgun.

Wolff was not the only one arrested. Twenty-one-year-old Mitchell Wayne Platt was taken into custody. He is being charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of a controlled substance.

Bond for Wolff was set at $55,000. Platt’s bond is $50,000. Both men are being held by the Indian County Sheriff.

Published reports say a pharmacist became suspicious after Platt purchased ingredients used for making methamphetamine. Authorities questioned Platt, who, according to one local paper, told them “he and a friend were cooking methamphetamine.”

When detectives went to Wolff’s home, they say they found an area behind the house that was being used to make the drug.

The dangers of methamphetamine were spelled out in a 2007 report to Congress: “Illicitly used, methamphetamine can be administered orally, nasally, by injection, and, in the powder form that resembles granulated crystals, often referred to as “ice,” by smoking. Methamphetamine can cause convulsions, stroke, cardiac arrhythmia, and hypothermia. Chronic abuse can lead to irreversible brain and heart damage, memory loss, psychotic behavior Including paranoid ideation, visual and auditory hallucinations, and rages and violence.”

That same study said 170,000 Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 used meth in 2005. For young people, the drug is easy to obtain and inexpensive. And some children don’t have to leave the house to find it.