One Year Later: The Anniversary of Operation Meth Merchant is No Cause for Celebration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 2, 2006, 12:00 p.m.

One Year Later: The Anniversary of “Operation Meth Merchant” is No Cause for Celebration

Media Contact: Deepali Gokhale, 404-822-5090, stopomm@mindspring.com

ATLANTA, GEORGIA, June 2, 2006 -- Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the day 49 people were arrested as part of "Operation Meth Merchant," the government’s botched sting operation targeting South Asian convenience stores in northwest Georgia. Roundly criticized by attorneys, community activists, and academics, last summer’s operation has done nothing to solve the methamphetamine ("meth") problem. Instead, it has become a symbol of wasted taxpayer resources, scapegoating of a vulnerable immigrant community, and an overzealous U.S. Attorney’s office.

“Operation Meth Merchant” has done nothing to address the meth problem in Georgia. In fact, the number of meth labs found in northwest Georgia has increased. Even the Lookout Mountain Drug Task Force, the group responsible for “Operation Meth Merchant”, has corroborated this fact in an article on February 18th titled “Meth Crisis” in the Rome Daily Tribune. Also, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s own statistics, more than 80% of the meth in northwest Georgia is created in superlabs in other places and transported into this state. (http://www.csdp.org/research/Campion_Testimony.pdf) Targeting a community that makes up less than 2% of the population is not only misguided, it does not begin to address the ominous problem of meth in northwest Georgia and instead attacks and scapegoats a vulnerable community in the process.

One motion filed in these cases demonstrated South Asian stores in the relevant area were 95 times more likely to be investigated than non-South Asian stores. The Racial Justice Campaign Against “Operation Meth Merchant” (RJC) asks the government, one year later, to answer for how targeting and devastating a community based on their race, ethnicity and language has provided any real solutions to the terrible problem of meth addiction in northwest Georgia.


One-Year Later: What Operation Meth Merchant Has Done

The government has only succeeded in devastating the lives of a vulnerable minority group. More than half of the stores targeted have closed, at least 5 men are detained far from their families awaiting deportation, one woman was left homeless when her husband was taken into immigration custody, and the resulting stress has led some to consider suicide. Seven brave souls await trial. All this, when the government has never shown that meth was sold, produced, or used as a result of sales from the South Asian operated stores.

Throwing people in jail has never solved the problem of drug addiction. Federal tax dollars have irresponsibly been wasted on an ineffective operation that targets people with at best a tenuous connection to the actual problem instead of investing resources on real solutions—drug rehabilitation, diversionary programs, and drug counseling.


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