Tennessee lawmakers put meth makers online
Tennessee law-enforcement officials are trying a new tactic in the battle against methamphetamine: posting the names of people convicted of manufacturing the drug in an online database modeled after sex-offender registries.
The Web site, called the Methamphetamine Offender Registry, allows Internet users to enter a name or county, and instantly discover convictions that occurred after March 30, 2005. The Web site opened last week. It is the first time the state has widely publicized the identity of drug offenders, said Jennifer Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
“The whole idea is for people to know if their neighbors are involved in (methamphetamine production),” Johnson said. Meth labs, she said, “were becoming a public threat, to the extent that you couldn’t even feel safe in your own neighborhood.”
In 1995, Montana expanded its public sex-offender registry to include other violent offenders, including “meth cooks,” but there are no other existing models for Tennessee’s registry, according to Blake Harrison of the National Conference of State Legislators.
Tennessee lawmakers proposed the measure in response to pleas from landlords and property owners, who can be bankrupted overnight by the cost of cleaning contaminated properties. Chemicals in the drug are absorbed into concrete and plaster; layers of topsoil must be removed in areas where chemicals were dumped.
New tenants or buyers moving into a property formerly used to make methamphetamine could develop long-term illness from residual chemicals that linger in carpets and draperies.
State Rep. Judd Matheny said he expects the registry to face challenges in court, especially once it has been in place long enough to list old violations. Sex-offender registries were controversial when the idea first emerged in 1994, after the rape and murder of a New Jersey girl, 7-year-old Megan Kanka. Civil liberties advocates at the time complained that the registries unfairly punished citizens who had already paid their debt to society.
By 2002, all 50 states had some version of the law.