Drug Training Center Opens at Quantico

$16.4 Million Facility Will Help DEA Teach Law Enforcement How to Eliminate Labs

Michele M. Leonhart, acting administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration, remembers the early days of busting clandestine drug labs, when agents would confiscate toxic materials wearing only rubber gloves for protection and transport them in the trunks of their cars.

"You're kind of hallucinating as you drive back," she joked to a crowd of law enforcement officials recently. "We've come quite a long way."

Evidence of Leonhart's assertion -- that tactics in the war on drugs have advanced markedly since the 1980s -- stood behind her as she spoke at the dedication of the DEA's state-of-the-art Clandestine Laboratory Training and Research Center at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

The $16.4 million building, unveiled this month after two years of construction, will train federal, state and local law enforcement officers from across the country in how to safely eliminate secret drug labs, which, in the United States, primarily produce methamphetamine.

The Prince William County Police Department and other local agencies have for years sent officers to get specialized training from the DEA at Quantico, said county police Maj. Ray Colgan. He said that a meth lab was busted in a Manassas hotel room a few years ago and that he is pleased the DEA's new facility is so close by.

"It's a tremendous help. They provide excellent training," Colgan said. "I think we may have an advantage to other people because we're so close to headquarters."

The 31,600-square-foot training center, which will also host international students, will offer instruction in toxicology, chemical hazards, evidence collection and how to operate safely in contaminated spaces. The center replaces 11 Quonset huts elsewhere on the base that date to the 1950s and held classes until recently, officials said. Students will also no longer have to travel to a lab in Largo to learn the process of meth production under a DEA forensic chemist.

Leonhart said that clandestine labs are discovered every day in the United States and that they present unique dangers and challenges to officers raiding them. They often contain harmful chemicals, armed inhabitants, booby traps and even children to look out for, Leonhart said.

"We always find children," she said.

The facility has a smoke house, where students practice escaping a meth lab that has caught fire. Christopher Browning Jr., a senior instructor with the DEA, said drug lab blazes are "extremely explosive."

There is also a tactical raid facility, where agents rehearse busting into a meth lab and apprehending -- even shooting -- offenders.

"Police! Search warrant!" an agent yelled during a demonstration following the unveiling. A group of agents, wearing respiration devices to avoid contamination, then waited a moment before breaking through an outside door and making their way through a mazelike structure, carefully covering one another as they rounded each corner before taking down a mock suspect by shooting blanks.

U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wrote in a statement that the new training center will allow for continued progress in the fight against clandestine labs.

"Methamphetamine wreaks havoc on its users and their families, and clandestine labs can devastate neighborhoods," Mukasey wrote. "We have had great success in reducing the number of small domestic meth labs over the past few years. This new facility will allow us to train more of our partners in law enforcement, so they can continue that success while protecting themselves from becoming victims of the toxic environment the labs create."