Mexico meth goes international

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Thanks to tougher U.S. laws, fewer people are cooking up batches of meth in dangerous homemade labs, but that doesn't mean the supply has dried up. Eighty percent or more of America's methamphetamine habit now comes from Mexico, law enforcement officials say.

That means U.S. drug agents are changing how they fight this particular drug war — looking to stop Mexican traffickers on interstate highways instead of raiding small-time meth labs in kitchens and backyard sheds.

"These people are not involved to satisfy their own drug habits," said U.S. Attorney Russ Dedrick of Knoxville. "They are involved for money."

State and federal laws that restrict purchases of the decongestant pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient in making the addictive stimulant — have sharply reduced rural, clandestine labs.

But those labs have been replaced by superlabs in Mexico and by Mexican-run labs in some American border states, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said. They are supplied with bulk shipments of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine originating mostly in China, India and Germany, he said.

"The issue now is international chemical control," Payne said. "When these chemicals are diverted onto the illegal market, that is a global issue."

Payne said the "growth of international drug trafficking organizations, specifically meth production, has created a huge amount of supply in the United States. They have sort of outdone the small toxic labs."

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Meth is a pernicious drug that has ruined countless lives in rural America. The restrictions on pseudoephedrine have just made it easier for the Mexican cartels to take over the business. Just how lucrative it has become for the cartels is demonstrated by this photo that accompanied the story. Much of the violence along the border involves turf wars by the cartels to control the shipment of this drug and the profits from it.