Mexican labs set to pour meth into Arizona
December 4, 2005 - Arizona Daily Star
ULIAC?N, SINALOA -- The meth lab by the seminary was exceptional, even by narco-trafficker standards.
Equipped with cylinders of acetone, ethanol and oxygen tanks, principal ingredients of meth production, the superlab was capable of producing at least 12 pounds of crystal methamphetamine - nearly 18,000 quarter-gram doses - a day, investigators estimate.
Its discovery surprised investigtors in Sinaloa, where a dose of crystal sells on the streets for 30 pesos, about $2.50.
But across the border, federal and state officials believe a much more lucrative market has opened its doors: Arizona.
Arizona has long been a distribution point for Mexican meth into the rest of the country. The state has had a law since Nov. 1 limiting the purchase of pseudoephedrine to 9 grams and placing medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind the counter, to crack down on local labs that use the ingredient to "cook" meth.
But few believe the restrictions will keep the drug out of Arizona, particularly when meth smuggling is growing along the border. Officials fear the state may see what happened when Oklahoma passed a pseudoephedrine crackdown: an increase in Mexican meth.
In Sinaloa, drug cartels have already begun adding meth to their illicit product line.
A good chunk of that could end up in Tucson, where meth sells for about $50 a gram, and where local police acknowledge that users will be looking for new ways to get the drug.
Detectives are anticipating stepped-up investigations of traffickers who move drugs from Mexico, said Capt. David Neri, who leads the Counter Narcotics Alliance.
Once meth gets to Tucson, it can be linked to more than half of local property crimes, including most fraud and identity-theft cases, police say.
Meth harms local kids, too. Arizona leads the nation in meth use by children between 12 and 17, according to the Arizona Attorney General's Office. And last year about 600 children in Pima County were taken from their homes and put in foster care because of their parents' meth addictions.
"The legislation isn't going to stop someone who is addicted to an illegal drug. What we were looking at is something that we have some control over," said Andrea Esquer, spokeswoman for Arizona's attorney general.
The United States and Canada began restricting pseudoephedrine shipments from sources including Hong Kong and the Czech Republic about five years ago, said Ramona Sanchez, spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Phoenix office.
The restrictions have helped slash the number of so-called superlabs, which can produce 10 pounds of meth in one day. More primitive mom-and-pop operations churn out, at most, a few ounces. In 2001, 264 superlabs were seized in the United States. By 2004, the number dropped to 55.
"The large-scale methamphetamine production in the U.S. is declining. That is why you see a proliferation in Mexico and along our borders," Sanchez said.
Oklahoma first to curb sales
In 2002, Oklahoma became the first state to restrict over-the-counter sales of pseudoephedrine. Twenty-three states have followed.
The result for Oklahoma has been fewer meth labs and dumping sites - 20 per month now compared with 120.
But there has been a marked increase in the influx of meth from Mexico, said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.
That result was not unexpected. Nobody believed the restrictions on cold medicine would win the war on meth, he said.
"But we do not have to respond to meth labs now. It frees us up to start working larger drug investigations," he said.
Meanwhile, the demand for the drug elsewhere doesn't seem to have wavered, and large amounts of meth keep flowing across the border.
Seizures in Texas increased from 14 pounds in 1992 to 3,820 pounds in 2003, the Brownsville Herald reported last summer.
At the Arizona border with Sonora, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized 1,781 pounds of meth last year. Three years ago they seized only 320 pounds, said agency spokesman Brian Levin.
On Thanksgiving Day, customs inspectors in Douglas found 14 pounds stashed in the camper of a pickup truck coming in from Agua Prieta, Sonora, Levin said.
Anecdotally, U.S. Attorney Anne Mosher, who assigns drug cases in Tucson, has seen increases in raw poundage carried by individuals crossing into Arizona.
"The volumes have surprised me," she said.
Mexico began restricting the movement of pseudoephedrine earlier this year, requiring shipments to move only by armored car equipped with GPS-tracking devices and escorted by police, according to the Associated Press.
But pseudoephedrine and other chemicals used to make meth are readily available in Mexico, said Anthony Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson office.
Phosphorus and acetone are diverted from Asia and Germany to Mexico, where they ultimately are used by criminal organizations, he said.
And in Sinaloa, home to Mexico's most powerful drug lords, the cartels have already begun shifting gears to add meth to the traditional business of supplying marijuana and cocaine, he said.
In Culiac?n, that's meant an increase in synthetic drugs like crystal meth, said Miguel Angel Campos Ortiz, the Sinaloa delegate for the Mexico Attorney General's Office.
It was his federal investigators who discovered the meth lab by the seminary in October, he said. It was the fourth well-equipped lab found this year.
"What we've been seeing is grams, but it's turning into mass production," he said.
Narcotics garbage dumps
Ismael Boj?rquez, publisher of Rio Doce, a weekly newspaper in Culiac?n, sees the evidence of that in the narco-basureros, narcotics garbage dumps where hundreds of blister packs from cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine are discarded.
Three weeks ago, a pile of the blister packs appeared on a street corner. "We weren't seeing these even three years ago," he said.
The existence of established smuggling corridors is a big advantage for the drug traffickers, and Mexico is poorly prepared for the battle ahead, said Comandante Apolo, head of the Sinaloa Special Forces Unit, who identified himself only by his undercover code name due to death threats from traffickers.
"Mexico's trying, I think, but they're still in their infancy to come up with a strong enforcement counterattack," said the DEA's Coulson. "They weren't accustomed to attacking this type of manufacturing."
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Quote:
veggie said:
Equipped with cylinders of acetone, ethanol and oxygen tanks, principal ingredients of meth production, the superlab was capable of producing at least 12 pounds of crystal methamphetamine - nearly 18,000 quarter-gram doses - a day, investigators estimate.
Quarter-Gram Doses? Heh. I was heavy into crystal for a long time, and even at my most strung outest, a quarter gram would last me a day or two. Theres no way a quarter gram is a dose....
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