Meth-Lab Victories Prove Fleeting

MSNBC reported Sept. 18 that police in Georgia and elsewhere have been hit by a wave of imported, high-quality meth as drug cartels moved to fill the void in local markets after local labs shut down.

"The labs start to decline and you're happy," said Phil Price of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "But the imported meth has really hit us hard. ... It's cheaper now to buy it on the streets."

Cartels have also turned Atlanta as a hub for distributing the drug nationally. "Unfortunately, I think we're going to go through what Miami went through with cocaine," said Price. Drug-enforcement officers have an especially tough time with meth because, "Unlike drugs derived from organic materials, such as cocaine or heroin, (methamphetamine) production is not limited to a specific geographic region," noted Anne Patterson, assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Most meth now sold in the U.S. comes from Mexico, where the drug is made with chemicals smuggled in from Asia. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and counterparts from other countries are working to control global supplies of meth-making chemicals like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, but, "We're seeing ephedrine shipped from India and China to South Africa and then from there to South and Central America," said DEA administrator Karen Tandy. "Chinese ephedrine is being diverted through Cairo on its way to Mexico. And ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are being diverted in other African countries including Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Mozambique."