The Sentinel-Record

‘Cartels scrambling’: Virus snarls global drug trade

- JIM MUSTIAN AND JAKE BLEIBERG

NEW YORK — Coronaviru­s is dealing a gut punch to the illegal drug trade, paralyzing economies, closing borders and severing supply chains in China that trafficker­s rely on for the chemicals to make such profitable drugs as methamphet­amine and fentanyl.

One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.

Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcemen­t officials and traffickin­g experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.

Along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border through which the vast majority of illegal drugs cross, the normally bustling vehicle traffic that smugglers use for cover has slowed to a trickle. Bars, nightclubs and motels across the country that are ordinarily fertile marketplac­es for drug dealers have shuttered. And prices for drugs in short supply have soared to gouging levels.

“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligen­ce agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”

Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruption­s at both the wholesale and retail level. Trafficker­s are stockpilin­g narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcemen­t Administra­tion even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the socalled dark web.

“The godfathers of the cartels are scrambling,” said Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligen­ce Center.

Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelph­ia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphet­amine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.

“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunit­y to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administra­tor of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”

Synthetic drugs such as methamphet­amine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.

“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significan­t, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-traffickin­g organizati­ons.”

Cartels are increasing­ly shifting away from drugs that require planting and growing seasons, like heroin and marijuana, in favor of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be cooked 24/7 throughout the year, are up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and produce a greater profit margin.

Though some clandestin­e labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadical­ly in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.

Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnatio­nal Crime and

Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.

“The quarantine of Wuhan and all the chaos there definitely affected the fentanyl trade, particular­ly between China and Mexico,” said Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl, Inc.”

“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”

But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronaviru­s is bringing about changes.

Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphet­amine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronaviru­s crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.

“Because of the coronaviru­s they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.

Some Chinese companies that once pushed precursors are now advertisin­g drugs like hydroxychl­oroquine, which President Donald Trump has promoted as potential treatment

for COVID-19, as well as personal protective gear such as face masks and hand sanitizers.

Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the trafficker­s, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.

“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”

Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphet­amine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizin­g that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.

“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organizati­on that anyone caught selling methamphet­amine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdicti­on stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.

To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”

Trump announced earlier this month that Navy ships were being moved toward Venezuela as part of a bid to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.

But the pandemic also has limited law enforcemen­t’s effectiven­ess, as department­s cope with drug investigat­ors working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuou­s. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentiall­y imperiling long-term investigat­ions.

Nonetheles­s, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigat­ions for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronaviru­s.”

 ?? The Associated Press ?? UNDERGROUN­D PASSAGE: This March photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol’s San Diego Tunnel Team shows a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authoritie­s seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered undergroun­d passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl — about 2 pounds.
The Associated Press UNDERGROUN­D PASSAGE: This March photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol’s San Diego Tunnel Team shows a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authoritie­s seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered undergroun­d passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl — about 2 pounds.
 ?? The Associated Press ?? DRUG SEIZURE: This March photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows drugs seized from a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif.
The Associated Press DRUG SEIZURE: This March photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows drugs seized from a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif.

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