La Crosse County’s heroin task force may as well be called meth task force

Nearly 300 were charged with meth-related crimes in area last year.

The word ‘heroin’ still appears in the name of an anti-drug task force in La Crosse County.

A bigger problem in the region now, however, is methamphetamine.

La Crosse County’s drug task force received a crash course on meth during its monthly meeting Thursday afternoon. It has surpassed heroin as a drug of choice in the area, according to MEG Unit investigator Tom Johnson.

The task force was formed four years ago to respond to heroin overdoses in the county, but Johnson says needle use by heroin addicts appeared to naturally spread to meth use by injection.

“We had more people injecting meth in this particular part of the state, than in other parts of the state,” Johnson said at the meeting. “They’re, unfortunately, catching up to us.”

Almost 300 people were charged with meth-related crimes in La Crosse County last year, doubling the number arrested just three years ago.

Johnson says that makes meth the most commonly-used illegal drug in the area now. In 2015, Johnson led a large arrest of meth suspects in the county, with 17 people charged as a result.

“Charges were dismissed on one of them that was located in the Twin Cities that was kind of an outside factor,” Johnson said. “The remaining 16, out of them, 15 have plead. There’s one case open and we have not gone to trial on any of those cases.”

Johnson added that many locked up for meth crimes in recent years have been released and have gone back to dealing drugs.