U.S. TARGETS TRAFFICKING CENTERS FOR METH

Federal authorities are targeting methamphetamine “transportation hubs” around the country in an effort to block the distribution of the highly addictive drug, officials announced Thursday.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon visited Atlanta to announce the launch of Operation Crystal Shield. Atlanta is one of eight cities the agency has identified as a hub where methamphetamine from Mexico arrives in bulk for distribution around the country.

The other cities are Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Phoenix and St. Louis. By focusing on those hubs, Dhillon said, they hope to attack the entire supply chain and intercept the drug before it is trafficked to neighborhoods and communities throughout the country.

A 2005 federal law that regulated the retail sale of over-the-counter drugs like pseudoephedrine — which can be used to make methamphetamine — largely eliminated the production of the drug in the U.S., Dhillon said. Now, however, almost all the methamphetamine consumed in the U.S. comes from Mexico, where it’s produced on an industrial scale and smuggled across the border, he said.

DEA seizures of methamphetamine in the U.S. increased by 127 percent, from 22,456 kilograms to 50,869 kilograms, between fiscal years 2017 and 2019, and DEA arrests related to the drug rose nearly 20 percent, the agency said.

Authorities have seen a dramatic spike in the amount of methamphetamine smuggled across the U.s.-mexico border in recent months.

From October through the end of January, authorities seized about 22,680 kilograms of methamphetamine at U.s.-mexico border crossings. That’s more than was seized for the entire 2017 fiscal year.