SAN DIEGO: The seizures of methamphetamine soared at the US, Mexico border during fiscal 2014, accelerating a trend that began several years ago as new laws that limited access to the drug’s chemical ingredients made it harder to manufacture it in the United States.
Meth seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego field office accounted for nearly two-thirds 63 percent of all the meth seized at all ports of entry nationwide in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper reported.
Almost all of the meth consumed in the United States was once manufactured domestically, with San Diego as a known production hub.
With the California border as their main smuggling route, “the Mexican cartels are flooding the U.S. marketplace with their cheap methamphetamine,” said Gary Hill, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistant special agent in charge in San Diego.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show a 300 percent increase in meth seizures at California ports of entry from fiscal 2009 to 2014.
Agents find the drug, often in smaller quantities, strapped to pedestrians crossing the border, in gas tanks, mixed in with clothing or hidden in food cans emptied of their original contents. In some instances, smugglers are liquefying the drug and trying to conceal it as windshield-washer fluid.
Undercover agents are buying it in San Diego for about $3,500 a pound about a third of the costs of a pound of cocaine and prices have been decreasing since 2008, Hill said. He added that, unlike with cocaine, drug cartels can eliminate the middleman by directly overseeing meth manufacturing, and the smaller overhead means a cheaper street price in the United States.
