Pearl River County has a crime problem. The Pearl River County Board of Supervisors has lamented for months that it spends too much of its budget on crime-related expenditures.

The court system is overloaded. Our police departments are relatively small, understaffed and we expect a lot from them.

Stories where we have to report incidents of local residents distributing more than five kilos of cocaine and large amounts of methamphetamine make this problem feel even more overwhelming.

Today, we report on another local case where residents were allegedly growing and making illegal substances in their home to sell.

Although it isn’t known the quantity of narcotics produced or for how long, it’s eye-opening to hear about these things happening in our community.

Those that were arrested this week were also falsely selling these substances as narcotics, but really they were just selling medication intended for horses.

The repercussions of those actions on the community are unfathomable.

Yet, through the efforts of state and local law enforcement agencies, the community is fighting back.

The penalties for those distributing methamphetamine need to be fully enforced.

It’s one thing to become addicted to a substance and need treatment, but to fuel and stir that addiction in others is detrimental to the entire community.

Although no one wants to read stories about police arresting drug manufacturers, these stories demonstrate that local law enforcement agencies are doing their jobs.

We hope their efforts continue to round up distributors in this county and cut off a main source of the problem.