Pubdate: Tue, 05 Mar 2002
Source: Deseret News (UT)
Copyright: 2002 Deseret News Publishing Corp.
Contact:  http://www.desnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/124
Author: Clifford Krauss, New York Times News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

CANADA IS METH CONDUIT

Seizures Of Raw Ingredient At Border Increase

TORONTO - The illegal production in the United States of popular stimulants 
like methamphetamine reflects lax regulations in Canada for the chemical 
ingredients, U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials said.

As a result, Canada has become the leading supply route for the raw 
ingredient - typically in the form of decongestants - to the United States 
where the substances are more tightly controlled.

In the last 11 months, the U.S. Customs Service has seized more than 110 
million tablets of decongestants that contain the primary ingredient for 
making methamphetamines, or "speed," as smugglers attempted to bring them 
across the border among shipments of everything from furniture to glassware.

The seizures have become so huge that Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of 
the U.S. Customs Service, recently joked that enough decongestant had been 
confiscated from one truck "to unplug about every nose in Michigan for 
several years."

That truck had crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Detroit last year from 
Canada where the decongestant, pseudoephedrine, is perfectly legal and 
freely obtained even though it is a tightly controlled substance in the 
United States.

Canada's connection to illegal U.S. methamphetamine production arose after 
Washington tightened controls over pseudoephedrine several years ago, and 
as trafficking routes through Mexico were shut down. Now, an alliance of 
diverse organized crime groups stretching from Mexico to Iraq and Jordan 
have found Canada an easy entry point into a growing U.S. market for 
synthetic drugs.

Canadian businesses legitimately import the chemical substance in powder 
form mostly from China.

Those imports have increased 14 times since 1995, U.S. and Canadian law 
enforcement officials said. Some of that has helped Canadian cold sufferers 
in the form of decongestants manufactured by several Canadian 
pharmaceutical companies.

But a large portion of it has entered the U.S. black market for 
methamphetamine, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Canadian 
officials said.

"The diversion of pseudoephedrine from Canadian suppliers to the illicit 
market is reaching a critical level," according to an intelligence report 
by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 
January.

As methamphetamine, which gives users a seductive rush of power, confidence 
and energy, has grown in popularity since the mid-1990s, it has become a 
priority for law enforcement officials.

The drug is an especially addictive narcotic that can cause brain damage 
and aggressive behavior and has been linked to 60,000 admissions a year in 
U.S. hospitals.

Under prodding from the Bush administration, Canada has acknowledged the 
trafficking problem and the government here is drafting a number of 
regulations on pseudoephedrine imports and exports as well as enforcement 
strategies to close the Canadian connection.
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