AP IMPACT: Cartels flood US with cheap meth

[Nova78]

AP IMPACT: Cartels flood US with cheap meth | General Headlines | Comcast

Mexican drug cartels are quietly filling the void in the nation's drug market created by the long effort to crack down on American-made methamphetamine, flooding U.S. cities with exceptionally cheap, extraordinarily potent meth from factory-like "superlabs."

Although Mexican meth is not new to the U.S. drug trade, it now accounts for as much as 80 percent of the meth sold here, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And it is as much as 90 percent pure, a level that offers users a faster, more intense and longer-lasting high.

"These are sophisticated, high-tech operations in Mexico that are operating with extreme precision," said Jim Shroba, a DEA agent in St. Louis. "They're moving it out the door as fast as they can manufacture it."

To bad Obama has allowed this mess to get out of control , yet he opens the flood gates, Obama has destroyed America.......

 

[waltky]

A lil' cleanup and a coat of paint an' they'll never know...

With meth-contaminated homes, it's buyer beware
3/20/2013 > Anne-Marie Cory and her partner spent the better part of a year looking for a dream home in Longmont that fit their budget.

They had the property under contract when they discovered that a former occupant had been a methamphetamine smoker. Tests came back positive for the drug. "We didn't want to bring a baby into a house contaminated with meth," said Cory, who was pregnant at the time. Erik Nelson, then a real estate agent who had bought the home to fix up and sell, spent about $26,000 on meth testing, cleanup and then retesting to ensure it was safe for Cory to move in.

Project supervisor Armando Lopez of Elite Environmental Services on Monday works his way to items that are to be cleaned and saved before a methamphetamine-contaminated house in Fort Lupton is torn down.

Other buyers have discovered such contamination too late, losing thousands of dollars and winding up with homes that had to be stripped to the studs. "It is certainly a problem, how big it is is hard to quantify," said Colleen Brisnehan, an environmental protection specialist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. No one knows how many homes along the Front Range are contaminated by meth, and there is no requirement to test for it unless evidence of meth use is already known. But state and industry officials say, as more testing is done, they are discovering more meth-contaminated properties, particularly among foreclosed or rental homes that are coming back on the market amid a housing recovery.

"Buyer beware"

Not all of these homes are meth labs where the drug was cooked. Homes can be left toxic if someone has simply smoked methamphetamine a few times. The drug can leave behind toxins that cause respiratory and other illnesses. "It is definitely buyer beware," said Timothy Gablehouse, a lawyer who handles environmental contamination cases. He recommends testing if there is anything about the home's history that raises alarms. About half of the properties tested by Weecycle Environmental Consulting are positive for meth, said Judy Sawitsky, an industrial hygienist and president of the Boulder firm. Weecycle tests for meth, asbestos and other contamination. About one-third of properties that test positive have levels of contamination high enough to require some cleanup under state standards, she added.

The problem is greatest among rental properties, particularly those in the low- to average-cost ranges, said Jim Dennison, president of Century Environmental Hygiene in Fort Collins. "Meth can be detected in homes after a small number of uses, and the residues persist in homes for many years, meaning that if anyone ever smoked meth there in the past, it may show up in a test. So, while most people do not use meth, many houses are still affected," Dennison said. Foreclosures also test positive more often than homes occupied by the same owner for years, Dennison said. Colorado's Neighborhood Stabilization Program operated in areas with high foreclosure rates, purchasing, renovating and selling 167 single family homes and 139 multifamily rental units, according to Patrick Coyle, director of the Colorado Division of Housing.

Read more: With meth-contaminated homes, it's buyer beware - The Denver Post With meth-contaminated homes, it's buyer beware - The Denver Post

 

[TheOldSchool]

All because Walt made Jesse kill Gale... tsk tsk

 

[aaronleland]

All because Walt made Jesse kill Gale... tsk tsk

I liked Gale. Shame on you, Jesse. Shame on you.

 

[OKTexas]

I wonder what it would cost to get them to put a little cyanide in the meth before shipping it up here. That could put a dent in crime.

 

[waltky]

Cops locked up meth-head buggin' the gas repairman an' mumblin' down our street over the weekend...

Report: Meth seizures at US-Mexico border soar in 2014
January 4, 2015 — Seizures of methamphetamine soared at the US-Mexico border during fiscal year 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 U.S.

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 ending Sept. 30, the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper reported Sunday (http://bit.ly/1BxwFy2). Almost all of the meth consumed in the U.S. was once manufactured domestically, with San Diego as a known production hub. But a crackdown in the U.S. on the precursor chemicals used to make the synthetic drug has pushed its manufacture south of the border, where drug cartels now find it cheaper and easier to produce and smuggle over the border than cocaine from South America, the paper reported.

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 the stuff in San Diego for about $3,500 a pound — about a third the cost 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 U.S. Joe Garcia, interim special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego, said much of the meth coming into San Diego is headed north. Los Angeles has emerged as an important hub for shipments headed elsewhere, he said. "Our investigations take us through all corners of the country," he said. "It's going into Canada as well."

Locally, authorities in San Diego have seen the consequences of more meth coming across the border. Emergency room visits and deaths are up, as are the number of arrests for meth, said Angela Goldberg, coordinator for the Meth Strike Force, an effort by law enforcement and health officials in San Diego County to combat meth. And drug prosecutions in San Diego County for meth jumped from eight in 2013 to 60 in 2014. "It's very hard to get past these drug cartels," Goldberg said. "They're very good at what they do."

Report Meth seizures at US-Mexico border soar in 2014 CNS News

 

[The Rabbi]

Hey, we're losing the war on meth. Let's legalize it instead!