DEA: Mexican meth flooding across the border
http://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/dea-mexican-meth-flooding-across-the-border
LAREDO, TEXAS — The Feds are actively making meth busts along the border. In the last week they seized over $500,000 worth of meth, weighing nearly 50 pounds. Eighteen pounds of it came in liquid form, which is a new tactic smugglers are using.
“Of all the meth here in America, the DEA says 90 percent of it came from across the border over in Mexico. Mexican super labs are able to create a form of meth that’s so pure and so cheap that Americans can’t seem to get enough of it.”
Growing up in a small Texas town outside of San Antonio, Mandy Jo Myers felt she was always missing something in her life.
“I grew up with low self-esteem my entire life, this feeling of just like uselessness.”
She smoked pot, she drank, but that void was never filled. When she was 19, she tried meth for the first time.
“I just felt like I could do anything and everything and the world was my oyster,” she says in reminiscing laughter.
That was in the early 2000’s, a time James Reed, Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the DEA office in Laredo remembers as when most meth was locally made and locally consumed.
“It was a drug that was associated with blue collar type workers,” Reed says.
The so-called Meth Act of 2005 regulated the sale of over-the-counter ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine, a key ingredient to meth, which helped curb the addiction. At least temporarily.
According to the Texas Department of Health, after 2006, the number of people seeking publicly funded treatment for meth had been trending downward.But just recently demand is picking back up, and Mexican drug cartels are taking notice.
“The chemicals are readily available from China where the Mexican producers obtain them from,” Reed says.
For the first time ever in 2015, the amount of people seeking help in Texas surpassed 8,000, it also contributed 416 deaths last year in Texas. In 1999, 16 died from meth.
Reed says super labs in Mexico are making 90% pure meth in mass quantities, 100’s of pounds at a time, and smuggling it into America. Something most American labs can’t keep up with.
“The Mexican drug cartels are taking advantage of the fact that we have an addiction problem in the US.”
According to the DEA Drug Threat Assessment, meth’s availability in the southwest has spiked since 2013, the highest in the country.
“Now it’s a drug used in all demographics.”
It’s coincided with an increase in meth busts along the border too.
“We can’t just arrest ourselves out of this situation; we have to address this on a multi-tiered front.”
He says it’s a combination of enforcement and education, education from people like Mandy Jo, who’s four years clean. She works at a treatment facility.
“My best day high is not as good as my worst day sober.”
It’s the unlikeliest of teams. Once the demand stops, so will the meth flowing across our border
Filed under: General Problems
Build a very high wall.
Until the US can get the Mexican government on board to stop the mass production of meth, the crystal highway will continue to roll on. If they are calling Opiate abuse an epidemic, then Crystal Meth is a plague. It’s a drug that challenges Crack on the streets and is primarily used by truck drivers to stay awake and other jobs that are physically demanding. As with all drug addiction, education is the best way to fight it.
Our country’s youth are targeted just as cracked dealers did in the 90s. High school and college students tend to try drugs like meth in an attempt to do a better job in school and in sports. The dealers marketing strategies target everyone, not just a certain demographic area. My question is. America, how’s it feel to be conquered by Mexican Drug Lords?
So if 80 to 90 percent of methamphetamine comes from Mexico, why are we punishing patients by making it EVEN MORE DIFFICULT to purchase decongestants with PSE?