TIFTON — Nine people in the area have been arrested and charged with offenses relating to the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine and more arrests are expected.

Jeff Youngblood, commander of the Mid-south Narcotics Task Force, said Thursday the investigation leading to the arrests lasted for more than four months

“We had received information that these people were manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine in the Tifton area,” Youngblood said.

Youngblood said agents with the task force, the Tift County Sheriff’s Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation participated in the investigation.

“We used some surveillance and other techniques to get the information we needed to prosecute them,” Youngblood said.

Search warrants were served at several locations and some buys were made by agents working undercover during the course of the investigation. Youngblood said the team didn’t recover or discover a “full-blown” laboratory.

“They were moving labs from place to place,” Youngblood said.

Omega, Sumner, Albany and Ty Ty were the primary towns and cities those arrested were allegedly working. Youngblood said those who are in the methamphetamine business have begun hiding the labs in woods and other areas and not in homes as before.

“It makes it more difficult to find them,” Youngblood said. “They are parking vehicles in fields and doing the cooking and hiding the lab somewhere else.

“We have found the labs abandoned in the woods where they have the kits stored in large plastic containers.”

The public can help agents, Youngblood said, by being aware of people coming in and out of property that doesn’t belong to them. The owners of stores where people are purchasing items needed to make the illicit drug can also keep an eye out for unusual purchases.

“People buy lye and sulfuric acid, but they usually don’t buy pounds of lye and gallons of sulfuric acid,” Youngblood said.

“If any of the store owners want to know what to look out for, contact us and we’ll be glad to give them a list.”

Since a new law was passed that limits the number of boxes of ephedrine, one of the ingredients used in manufacturing methamphetamine, people have been caught using fake identification cards and either returning to the same store and checking out with a different clerk or going from one store to the other.

Those arrested so far in the case include: