On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:26:08 -0800, jps wrote:


Oklahoma is among the country's densest braintrusts, for sure...

A woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma was arrested Thursday for trying to set up
a meth lab inside a Walmart store.

Police said security footage showed Elizabeth Alisha Greta Halfmoon,
45, in the store for at least six hours gathering the chemicals needed
to manufacture methamphetamine.

Halfmoon told officers she was “too broke to buy the chemicals” and
take them out of the store.

“She didn’t have the money to make the purchases of the chemicals that
were needed so she was taking what was needed in the bottle,” Officer
David Shelby told Fox 23's Abbie Alford. “When I saw her, she had just
finished mixing sulfuric acid with starter fluid in a bottle,” he
added.

“When firefighters were on the scene, she made statements to them that
is what she was doing, she was attempting to obtain these chemicals
and was in the process of trying to manufacture meth. However, she
said she was not very good at it,” he added.

As she was being escorted to the police cruiser, Alford caught up with
Halfmoon and asked her if she was trying to cook meth.

“I wasn’t trying to make meth,” Halfmoon insisted.

But at least one officer probably disagrees. He was taken to a local
hospital to be treated for burns after the chemicals ate through his
gloves.

Just two days earlier, Halfmoon had been released after being arrested
in a “smurf sting.” Smurf is a term often used for a person recruited
to purchase the pseudoephedrine necessary meth production.

“She’s been arrested before for the manufacture of methamphetamine,”
Shelby told KJRH.

Earlier this year, police said another man, Glenn Reese, was busted in
the same Walmart with a mobile meth lab in his backpack.

There have been 1,700 meth lab busts in Tulsa from January 2002
through 2011. Between 2002 and 2005, about 3.7 percent of young adults
in Oklahoma self-reported using meth, according to the National Survey
on Drug Use and Health.

Exceeded by Washington state?