Drugs in Ozarks Town Infect Even Sheriff’s Dept.

For two troubled years, Mr. Adams was sheriff of Carter County, until his arrest last month on charges of distributing methamphetamine, the home-brewed drug that has poisoned much of this poor, sparsely populated stretch of timber country. Mr. Adams was accused of regularly snorting it as well.

But in this long-struggling community in southeastern Missouri where distrust of law enforcement has always run deep, the story of a sheriff enabling the scourge he was supposed to fight has not provoked outrage. Rather, many local residents are accepting it, even sympathetically, as another disappointing chapter in what they see as a hopeless fight.

“It shows how entrenched methamphetamine is in our system,” said Rocky Kingree, the county prosecuting attorney. “It’s something that has to be stopped, and it doesn’t seem like there is an end in sight.”

For most of a decade, Missouri has led the nation by a wide margin in the number of labs discovered to be producing methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant that can be made with household products like nasal decongestants. And throughout the Ozarks, the drug has metastasized.

In Ellsinore, the creeping problem has strained the bonds of its 446 residents. People recognize the symptoms of use in neighbors but, reflecting a culture of fierce independence, say nothing.

“We all know who does what, how they do it and when they do it,” said David Bowman, a school maintenance worker who is the mayor of Ellsinore. “You just turn your head and go on.”

In a community where hunting is less a hobby than another way to put food on the table, Mr. Adams was one of the many local boys who learned to string together a living out of odd jobs, working as a fry cook, an auto mechanic and the town’s one-man, part-time police force.

Three years ago, Mr. Adams, who is now 31, ran against the two-term sheriff, Greg Melton. There were persistent rumors about Sheriff Melton, including that he used methamphetamine. Several residents said last month that he had stolen from them or had sold them stolen goods.

Less than a month before the election, Mr. Melton was found dead in his garage, shot through the head. The county coroner, who found a gun in Mr. Melton’s hand, said that despite rumors otherwise, there was no doubt he had killed himself.

Mr. Adams’s narrow victory put him in charge of three deputies and a 500-square-mile region with 6,265 residents. Keeping a lower profile than his predecessor, he quickly became the subject of rumor himself. He rarely met with community leaders or showed up at the office, where paperwork piled high on his desk. He delegated to his chief deputy, who worried about his strange behavior.

Mr. Adams began spending conspicuously, buying cars, building a cabin and paying for the in vitro fertilization that led to the birth, eight months ago, of his son.

Like many people around here, he had grown up poor. He declared bankruptcy in 2005, with just $5 in cash and $300 in the bank. And even though his new $37,000 salary, on top of his wife’s pay as a nurse, represented good money in an area where the median household income is $27,000, his spending raised eyebrows.

Then there were his friends, including Richard Kearbey, who was arrested years earlier on charges of trying to buy 50 pounds of methamphetamine.

Though a federal judge in a later case described him as “the ringleader of a fairly large methamphetamine distribution network,” Mr. Kearbey served just seven days in jail. Instead, he worked as an undercover informant, helping arrest a number of small-time meth cooks, according to federal court records. (Neither Mr. Kearbey nor his longtime lawyer responded to messages seeking comment.)