Meth labs come to Ohio Amish country

MILLERSBURG, Ohio (AP) — More than 150 Amish men and women filled a farm building this spring to learn about the chemical curse that is surrounding them.

Methamphetamine, the drug peddled by outlaw bikers and street-corner dealers for decades, is on the rise in the land of the horse and buggy — though no one caught with the drug in the area has been Amish.

The rural hills of Holmes and Wayne counties, about 90 minutes south of Cleveland, is a place where violent crime and major drug trafficking have seldom been a problem.

But beneath the idyllic setting is an underbelly of criminal cookers who have begun brewing meth into a growing drug of choice in a region that might be one of the last in the state to face the drug’s scourge.