CBS 5 - KPHO 'Shake and bake' meth costly for AZ taxpayers

'Shake and bake' meth costly for AZ taxpayers

Methamphetamine addicts don't need a lab anymore, and it's costing taxpayers millions, according to the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center.

It's called shake and bake, and we are not talking about dinner time.

Basically, meth users take a plastic soda bottle and fill it with unstable ingredients that they shake to make meth that can be done anytime, anywhere.

It's like "a small bomb blowing up in your face," according to Kathy Paddack with Terros, a Phoenix-based outpatient drug, alcohol and mental health services center.

Paddack works with recovering addicts and knows the dangers of the shake and bake method well.

"It has to do with a mobile meth lab. It's much harder to get busted," she said.

"It's sort of an uncontrolled mixture of chemicals in one big pot or bottle and heating and shaking," said Dr. Kevin Foster at the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center.

Also called the "one-pot" approach, the concoction can explode, causing severe burns. Foster said it's happening more and more. 

"We think we are seeing an increase in burn injury because of the shake and bake method," he said.

But Foster said meth burn patients are not just hurting the user because the "burden of funding uncompensated care in this hospital falls to the taxpayers of Maricopa County and the State of Arizona."

That bill, according to Foster, can be a anywhere from $6,000 to $25,000 a day.

He also said most bad burn patients are in the hospital for more than a month, like one man he was treating Thursday. "For the patient we have been talking about who was here for two months, that's likely a $1 million, $1.5 million bill," he said.

Foster said the costs are so high because most of the people that have meth-related burns are uninsured.

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