Drug trafficking by the numbers

The popular stimulant drug made from the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine found in cold medications and manufactured into illegal methamphetamine in illicit laboratories may have initially been primarily trafficked by motorcycle gangs up and down the West Coast but concentrated in California. Mexican drug cartels are now heavily involved, and organized crime syndicates both manufacture and distribute the finished product as well as secure the main ingredients for domestic production in numerous smaller labs around the country. Superlabs produce larger quantities of meth at a time and are generally controlled by Mexican drug cartels, regardless of the side of the border on which the labs reside.

Legislation regarding the controlled status and sale of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine products has caused drug traffickers to get more creative in the ways they obtain the main ingredient in meth. The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act in 2005, required retailers to keep pseudoephedrine products behind the counter and to register sales.^[16] Traffickers began sending buyers to multiple retail outlets in the same day to buy small and legal amounts of pseudoephedrine, a process called “smurfing,” which they then used in clandestine labs to produce meth.

Meth can be “cooked” virtually anywhere; however, rural and smaller labs are prevalent across the Midwest and around the United States as well. Domestic meth production may be on the rise, as meth can be cut with many common products including anhydrous ammonia, one of the main ingredients used in fertilizer by farmers.

Meth labs are highly volatile as cutting meth uses highly flammable and explosive materials. From 2007-2009, the number of domestic meth lab incidents rose from 596 to 966 across the country, especially in the South and the Midwest.^[17] Oregon, Mississippi, and several cities have passed laws making pseudoephedrine only available with a prescription, and in Oregon, meth lab incidents decreased from 400 in 2004 to just 20 in 2008.^[18]

Prices of meth have dropped 70 percent between 2007 and 2012 while purity has increased. Meth seizures at the border have jumped from just over 2,000 kilograms to more than 10,000 kilograms.^[19] With the help tutorials on the Internet, small meth labs have sprung up around the country, although estimates report that 90 percent of the meth for sale on the streets in the United States is still made in Mexico.^[20]

Marijuana is the most popular illicit drug in the United States, as more than 80 percent of drug abusers used marijuana in 2013, and 19.8 million Americans aged 12 and older used marijuana in the month before the 2013 national survey.[21] The legality of marijuana in America has been hotly debated for years. Currently, 23 states and the District of Columbia have voted to decriminalize marijuana and legalize its use for medicinal or recreational purposes.^[22]

Domestic marijuana growers may be increasing their production, and the American public seems to prefer the designer strains and more potent domestic pot to the Mexican tightly packed “mota” bricks. Marijuana seizures at the SWB have gone down from 2.5 million pounds in 2011 to 1.9 million pounds in 2014, and the Mexican army confiscated 32 percent less cannabis in 2014.^[23]

The legal marijuana industry in America increased 74 percent in 2014, up to $2.7 billion.^[24] The shift to a more local market has caused the Mexican cartels to change gears and move toward other drugs in an attempt to continue to profit from the drug trade. Heroin and meth seem to be the answer as seizures of both of these drugs at the US/Mexico border increased as marijuana seizures declined.

Since 2009, heroin seizures at the SWB have almost tripled while meth seizures quintupled through 2014.^[25]

Cocaine comes from the coca plant traditionally grown in South America and in Columbia in particular. Cocaine is harvested into both a white powder and the cheaper crystalline rock form called “crack.”

The stimulant drug was commonly shipped by boat to Mexico for transport across the border into the US until 2007 when government efforts may have created a shift in cocaine trafficking. Around 60 percent of the 90 percent of cocaine reaching America through Mexico is now thought to stop in Central America first in order to avoid detection.[26] The price of cocaine on the American streets has thus risen 72 percent while purity has decreased by almost 33 percent.^[27] Officials have noticed a 58 percent drop in cocaine seizures at the southwestern border.^[28] Domestic seizures of cocaine have dropped significantly from 118,128 kilograms in 2005 to 24,103 in 2013, as cocaine’s popularity wanes.^[29]

Crack cocaine is cut with common products, making it less pure than powdered cocaine and therefore much less expensive. In the early 1980s, it hit the big cities and urban areas in the United States hard, leading to a sentencing disparity often criticized for its seemingly racial inequality. Crack cocaine possession and distribution initially carried a sentence 100 times more extreme than its powdered form, even though it is essentially the same drug. In 2010, President Obama reduced the sentencing disparity to 18 to one.

In 2009, almost 80 percent of crack cocaine offenders were black and serving an average of 115-month sentences in contrast with the 28 percent of powdered cocaine offenders serving an average of 87 months.^[30]Cocaine abuse has dropped 50 percent since 2006, and although crack offenses still indicate a racial element, sentence lengths have decreased.^[31] In 2013, a little over 13 percent of drug offenses involved crack cocaine and still over 80 percent of offenders were black.^[32] Of these offenders, 90 percent were male and 97.5 percent were American citizens, with an average age of 33 and an average sentence length of 96 months.^[33]

Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in the United States in 2013, and over half of these overdoses are related to the abuse of prescription medications.^[34] Prescription painkillers, or opioids, are of particular concern, as 44 Americans die every day as a result of a prescription opioid overdose.^[35]

While the majority of prescription medications are obtained for free from a friend or relative – 53 percent in 2013 – the rise in popularity of prescription medications as drugs of abuse has opened up a black market for the diversion and sale of these products.^[36] Approximately 28.1 percent of law enforcement agencies report that controlled prescription drugs are the largest drug threat in America, up from 9.8 percent in 2009, with states in the southeastern region of the country reporting even higher percentages.^[37]

Pain management clinics, often called “pill mills,” opened their doors in direct response to the growing prescription drug abuse epidemic, devising creative ways to avoid regulation and counter law enforcement control. These pill mills are often cash-only businesses. While they can be found all over the country, Texas, Louisiana, California, and Florida have the highest concentration of pill mills.^[38]

New regulations regarding pill mill operations as well as the introduction tamper-resistant prescription opioids and tighter control of these highly addictive pain relievers, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone products, may have created a resurgence of other illicit drugs. For instance, in 2010, OxyContin released a new and harder to crush format, making it more difficult to obtain and abuse the resulting powder. OxyContin’s street price skyrocketed, and by 2012, only 12.8 percent of Americans were choosing to abuse OxyContin, down from 35.6 percent.^[39] Prescription opioids began to fall out of favor and Oxy abusers instead turned to the old standby, heroin.

Most of the heroin on the streets in America has traditionally arrived from the Asian and Middle Eastern markets; however, recently a shift in the production of Mexican heroin has changed this dynamic, as the demand for heroin in the US increases. Heroin seizures at the SWB border increased 232 percent from 2008-2012.^[40]

The demographic of heroin abusers has seen a dramatic shift also with younger and more suburban types turning to heroin after abusing pain relievers. Around half of new injection heroin abusers may have first abused painkillers.^[41] While the number of heroin users has tripled in the US in the past five years, up to 600,000 Americans, over 10 million Americans are still abusing prescription pain medications.^[42]