A dream home for one Washington family became a house of horrors when they developed strange rashes and breathing problems after moving in five years ago. A neighbor later mentioned to them the dwelling’s dirty little secret: It had been used as a meth lab. Click below to read the rest of the story.
The shocking discovery forced John and Jessie Bates to sink hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the house, and now they’re still trying to put the hellish scenario behind them, they told Fox affiliate KCPQ in Seattle.
“We were furious that someone knew and didn’t tell us,†Jessie Bates said, adding, “We’re going to be recovering financially from this for the next 20 years easily, so it’s hard.â€
Scrubbing out traces of former mom-and-pop meth labs has been an unanticipated hurdle for home buyers across the United States, according to reports.
While the number of meth labs uncovered dropped by two-thirds following the federal government’s crackdown in 2005 of the methamphetamine epidemic, the residual effects remain, said the National Meth Center.
A 2010 report in Discover magazine estimates thousands to tens of thousands of Americans may have unwittingly snatched up homes that were once meth labs.
Dawn Dearden, a Drug Enforcement Agency spokeswoman, said that how governments deal with such properties and disclosure laws varies from state to state.
