Seizures of Mexican-made methamphetamine in the U.S. skyrocketed in 2014 due to a rise in drug trafficking into the U.S.
"The Mexican cartels are flooding the U.S. marketplace with their cheap methamphetamine," Gary Hill, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's assistant special agent in charge in San Diego, said to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) documented a 300 percent increase in meth seizures at California ports of entry from fiscal 2009 to 2014.
The highly addictive synthetic drug used to be primarily produced in the U.S. until the government began to carefully track the chemicals used to make it. Now growing quantities are produced at a low cost in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S, reported San Diego UT.
Smugglers coming from Mexico are also getting craftier with how they sneak drugs through border checks. Instead of hiding the drugs on their bodies they often liquefy them and stashing them in gas tanks, containers of windshield wiper fluid and even juice bottles to transport it across the border, reported San Diego UT. The smugglers later convert the liquid back into solid form at conversion labs.
U.S. law enforcement and health officials say they are reacting to the trends to combat the smuggling of meth into the country as much as possible.
"We've been agile, nimble, responsive to trends," Angela Goldberg, coordinator for the Meth Strike Force, an effort by law enforcement and health officials in San Diego County to combat meth, told San Diego UT. Still, "more use means more consequences. We are seeing a lot of health consequences, such as big increases in meth deaths and emergency room visits, along with public safety consequences, such as more arrests and more people in jail who test positive for meth. It's very hard to get past these drug cartels. They're very good at what they do."
Although the (CBP) noted such a significant increase in meth seizures in recent years, there appears to be only a small increase in meth users in comparison. The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in a 2013 survey 595,000 Americans said they used meth in the past month. In 2012 there were 440,000 meth users and in 2011 there were 439,000.
