Pubdate: Sun, 04 May 2003
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2003 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Steve Wiegand, Bee Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

HARDER TIMES FOR METH MAKERS

Canada, Anti-Terror Efforts Have An Impact.

A new law in Canada and heightened anti-terrorism security may be putting 
the squeeze on methamphetamine manufacturing in the Central Valley, law 
enforcement officials say -- and squeezing it into neighboring countries. 
Federal and state drug agency sources also say there is increasing evidence 
of links between meth trafficking in California and the financing of Middle 
Eastern terrorist organizations.

The Canadian law, which went into effect in January after more than a 
decade of discussion, requires licenses for people who import, export, buy 
or sell pseudoephedrine. The synthetic chemical compound is used mainly in 
cold and allergy medicines and is a key ingredient in the production of 
meth. Pseudoephedrine is heavily regulated in the United States. Before 
January, however, and much to the chagrin of American police, it was 
relatively easy to obtain in Canada.

Smuggling rings based in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest regularly 
moved tractor-trailers full of pseudoephedrine pills from Canada into the 
United States and sold them to meth producers in California.

A case of 75,000 pills might sell for $18,000 and produce eight pounds of 
meth that might sell for $48,000 wholesale.

But law enforcement agents say the new law has combined with tighter border 
controls spurred by terrorism threats to make it tougher to smuggle the 
"precursor" chemicals to clandestine California labs.

"Before, they were literally crossing the border with tractor-trailer loads 
of pseudoephedrine in tons," said Bill Ruzzamenti, a federal Drug 
Enforcement Administration agent who directs the nine-county Central Valley 
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program. "Now, we are seeing 
the Federal Express-type shipment of maybe a hundred pounds."

In response, however, outlaw motorcycle gangs in British Columbia and 
sophisticated "poly-drug" groups in Mexico are making meth in those 
countries, where it is still easier to obtain the ingredients than in the 
United States. The meth is then smuggled into the vast U.S. market.

"Ten pounds of meth is easier to get in than 100 pounds of 
pseudoephedrine," Ruzzamenti said.

"We're seeing more and more 'finished' meth coming in from across the 
borders. It's too early to tell how big or how much that will take away 
from the market here in Central California, but I think it's a harbinger of 
things to come," he said.

For more than a decade, California, especially the Central Valley, has been 
the mother lode for making meth, a drug that can be intensely addictive, 
trigger intense paranoia and shattering violence in its users, and cause 
irreparable brain damage.

Because production of the drug is a relatively simple process, thousands of 
amateur chemists set up small operations often referred to by cops as 
"Beavis & Butt-head labs," a reference to the moronic cartoon characters.

Those labs are dwarfed in production by "super labs" controlled by 
organized crime groups. Those groups are believed to be dominated by 
Mexican nationals who are based in California and ship meth all over the 
country.

The combined result has been a Valley pandemic of meth-related crime and 
environmental messes caused by the dumping of the toxic wastes that are 
byproducts of meth production.

Government efforts to stem the flood have escalated in the past two years, 
with more funding, the creation of specialized law enforcement groups and 
several major international sweeps of precursor smuggling rings.

Three weeks ago, U.S. and Canadian drug agents culminated an 18-month 
investigation by arresting 67 suspects around the country and confiscating 
34,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine. The busts, called "Operation Northern 
Star," grew out of another major sweep in January 2002 that resulted in 
more than 100 arrests and the seizure of 60,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine.

The sweeps have had some impact on the street, officials said, driving up 
meth prices. They've also driven down the drug's "purity" because meth 
makers "step on," or dilute their product to make it stretch further. A 
favorite dilution agent is MSM, a substance primarily used to increase 
joint flexibility in horses.

But the meth industry is nothing if not flexible.

In the past year, Valley drug cops say, meth labs have become smaller and 
more streamlined. Manufacturers are compartmentalizing various stages of 
the production process at different sites, lessening chances of detection 
and of losing all of the inventory in the event of a raid.

Dealers are also diversifying.

"What's really different around here is that even the small-quantity 
sellers will have two, three, four different varieties of crank at 
different purity levels, which they're selling at different price ranges," 
said Sacramento County Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Risedorph, who is with the 
California Multi-Jurisdictional Methamphetamine Enforcement Team (Cal-MMET).

"I guess the longer you sell something, the more variations you need to have."

The post-Sept. 11 scrutiny of terrorist activity has put more of a 
spotlight on pseudoephedrine smuggling groups with connections to the 
Middle East.

For years, small Central Valley markets were sources of pseudoephedrine. 
Law enforcement agents said some grocers, many of them with Middle Eastern 
roots, sold large quantities of cold pills literally out the back door to 
meth makers.

When new state and federal laws helped crack down on the practice, 
according to Ed Manavian of the state Justice Department's California 
Anti-Terrorism Information Center, some of the same grocers formed groups 
with friends and relations in the Midwest to smuggle pseudoephedrine in 
from Canada.

An analysis by the center of 74 major meth-related investigations in 
California in 2000 and 2001 found the primary pseudoephedrine trafficking 
groups were Yemeni, Jordanian or Palestinian.

Many of the groups have used the same financial networks used by terrorist 
organizations to funnel and launder money. The networks, called "hawalahs" 
(Arabic for "word of mouth"), rely on oral agreements to honor each other's 
financial obligations without leaving a paper trail.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says it has identified at least 
12 foreign terrorist organizations with links to drug trafficking.

Manavian declined to say whether there is evidence the drug groups were 
subgroups of terrorist organizations, or whether they were just showing 
their political sympathies by making contributions to the cause.

"What I can say is that we know that money from the illegal trafficking of 
drugs in California is making its way back to the Middle East to support 
terrorist activities," he said.

That stance has been disputed by attorneys for some of those arrested in 
the national meth sweeps of the past two years.

"There is no evidence to that; it's pure speculation," said Mark Werksman, 
a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who is representing a Chicago 
resident accused of conspiracy to sell pseudoephedrine to California 
customers. "No defendant has admitted to it in court or out of court to my 
knowledge."

No matter how Valley meth makers manufacture the drug and where they make 
it, or what they do with the money, law enforcement officials say the one 
sad constant is the abundance of customers.

"Except for marijuana, which everyone on drugs uses, meth is still the drug 
of choice here," said Risedorph, of the Sheriff's Department. "We still see 
plenty of cocaine, plenty of heroin, but meth dominates."
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