MSNBC reported July 5 that the survey from the National Association of Counties found that 58 percent of the 500 law-enforcement agencies questioned in 45 states said that meth is their major drug headache, far surpassing cocaine, marijuana, and heroin.

The federal government typically calls marijuana the nation's biggest drug problem, but the report said "county law-enforcement officials have a different perspective on this ranking. With the growth of this drug from the rural areas of the western and northwestern regions of this country and its slow but continuing spread to the east, local law-enforcement officials see [meth] as their number-one drug problem."

Counties on the West Coast and Upper Midwest were most likely to cite meth; in the Northeast, just 4 percent of counties named meth their biggest problem (46 percent named heroin).

But the survey indicted that meth is rapidly becoming a nationwide problem: 87 percent of agencies reported an increase in meth-related arrests. An accompanying report called meth use an "epidemic ... affecting urban, suburban, and rural communities nationwide."

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