The transaction took place in a parking lot near a Wal-Mart at Interstate 70 and Quebec Street in broad daylight July 5.
While shoppers went about their business, a buyer of another sort handed over $9,500 in cash in a paper bag. Two sellers, in turn, produced a cellphone box stuffed with a pound of methamphetamine that had been smuggled 1,040 miles to this deal. In a nearby parking lot, three more sellers waited with another 4 pounds.
The drug had been produced in an unsophisticated but productive “super lab” in a metal outbuilding in Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. It had been packed into a secret compartment in a vehicle and driven to the border town of Nogales, where the vehicle was waved through. Then the drug was spirited up Interstate 25 to Denver, where it was turned over to distributors who supply the Denver metro area and points east.
In this case, the distributors unwittingly sold the meth to the Drug Enforcement Administration. But Colorado law enforcement authorities say plenty of Mexican meth is making it into the hands of dealers and users across the state.
The DEA estimates as much as 80 percent of the meth circulating in Colorado comes from Mexico. Some local authorities put it as high as 90 percent.
“The border issue – that’s the piece that concerns me most,” said Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey, a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force member. “It leaves us with a sense of desperation to try to do something about the problem.”
Like other law officers in Colorado, Hilkey is having to shift gears from seeking out home meth labs where the drug is cooked in ounce amounts to trying to stem the flow from large-scale foreign suppliers who offer meth that is cheaper, more potent and in larger quantities.
Mexican superlabs can cook up to 200 pounds of the drug in a 24-hour period. One pound of the potent crystalized Mexican meth known as “ice” – more than 90 percent pure compared with as little as 25 percent purity for locally made meth – can yield about 3,000 doses.
Colorado is not alone in fighting this growing problem. Mexican meth has been traced to every state since the proliferation of superlabs began several years ago.
The drug is being cited as a major factor in increasing loads in courts, jails and social service agencies. Skyrocketing theft and fraud rates are being tied to addicts seeking meth money, and violent crimes are being traced to the paranoia-causing properties of the drug.
Drug cartels south of the border began cooking meth more than a decade ago and found an increased U.S. demand when domestic manufacturing was being pinched by regulations limiting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the common cold medication that’s a key ingredient in making meth.
Colorado became one of 30 states with such regulations when it passed a law last year limiting the sales of pseudoephedrine-containing medicines.
Law officers across Colorado say the new regulations may be contributing to the decline in meth labs in suburban kitchens and rural trailers. In 2002, 453 labs were investigated in Colorado. The next year, that number dropped to 345. And in 2004, only 144 labs were found.
But meth use has only continued to increase, drug officials said, because of the availability of the Mexican-made drug.
“I don’t think we were surprised by this trend,” said Jeffrey Sweetin, agent in charge of the Denver-based Rocky Mountain region for the DEA. “And I think we have to get the word out. I don’t think it’s fair to make people think they are going to sign up for pseudoephedrine and the meth problem is gone.”
Sweetin said Mexican drug cartels have been so effective at flooding this country with meth because they simply added it to the menu of drugs – cocaine, marijuana and heroin – that they were already smuggling in.
They took over a mainly California-based meth enterprise operated by outlaw biker gangs and turned it into an illegal export enterprise.
Newspapers in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Nayarit, Michoacán and Jalisco, where much of the Mexican meth is being manufactured, reflect the problem at that end. There are numerous articles about el cristel and expressions of frustration over a perceived lack of government action to shut down the labs.
DEA Special Agent Todd Wheeler said the Mexican superlabs are generally well-hidden and are not sophisticated manufacturing enterprises.
The drug can be transported in liquid form, and that has led to added headaches for border agents, who have seized an increasing amount of meth at the southwest border. In 2003 agents found 1,700 kilograms. Seizures for the past year are expected to add up to 2,300 kilos.
“Mexico has been blindsided by the drug just as the U.S. was,” said Tucson defense attorney and former DEA agent Steve Ralls, a native of Mexico.
Doug Coleman, deputy chief of congressional public affairs for the DEA in Washington, said the agency is working with Mexican politicians and law enforcement to stem meth production, but it has not been easy.
“They are at the beginning of this issue and just trying to get a handle on it,” he said.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
