MEXICO HALTS METH CHEMICAL AT PORT

Mexican officials inspecting a cargo container shipped from China
have uncovered a 19.5-ton cache of pseudoephedrine, enough to make a
dose of methamphetamine for every adult American.

Hundreds of barrels containing the essential meth ingredient were
seized Dec. 5 at the Lazaro Cardenas seaport in Michoacan after a
citizen tip, according to Mexico's attorney general. It was the
largest seizure of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine in Mexican history
and one of the biggest on record worldwide.

The 19.5 metric tons amount to 8 percent of the 233 metric tons of
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine that China manufactured in 2005,
according to Chinese government statistics compiled by Guangzhou CCM
Chemical Co. Ltd.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said the massive leakage of
pseudoephedrine from Chinese commerce underscores that "we need to go
to the source" and ensure the chemical is as tightly controlled in
China as it is in North America.

"It cries out for law enforcement attention being paid to the entire
supply chain," said Larsen, co-chairman of the congressional
Methamphetamine Caucus.

Such an enormous seizure suggests that Mexican traffickers,
struggling under tight restrictions on legal imports of
pseudoephedrine in Mexico, have found illicit sources in the handful
of countries that manufacture the chemical.

In 2005, The Oregonian reported that Mexico's pharmaceutical industry
was legally importing about twice as much as the country needed for
cold medicine. The demand was inflated by traffickers who bought up
millions of pseudoephedrine tablets.

Mexico improves

Since then, Mexican authorities have slashed imports of
pseudoephedrine by 70 percent to 70 tons, making it harder for
traffickers to acquire pseudoephedrine from legitimate drug companies
within Mexico.

New restrictions announced recently in Mexico also have capped the
size of any pseudoephedrine shipment at 1,100 pounds, meaning the
Michoacan load was 39 times the allowable amount.

As a result of the restrictions in North America, traffickers
increasingly must find middlemen within India and China to divert
bulk pseudoephedrine from legitimate commerce. In the case of the
pseudoephedrine in Michoacan, the chemical was mislabeled as "hydroxy
benzyl-n-methyl-acetamide." The barrels arrived on a British-flagged
freighter that stopped over in Long Beach, Calif., on its way from China.

International authorities say that despite Chinese laws requiring
manufacturers to keep records and sell to only licensed brokers, the
chemical repeatedly has reached Chinese middlemen who relabel the
material and smuggle it out to traffickers in Asia.

Question for China

China "may have very stringent laws, but the question is whether
those stringent laws are enforced properly and monitored properly,"
Wong Hoy Yuen, head of the United Nations project on precursor
chemicals in East Asia, said in an interview with The Oregonian
earlier this year.

U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., outgoing chairman of the House
government reform subcommittee on narcotics, said this week that the
19.5-ton seizure in Mexico may be an opportunity for U.S. officials
to press the case with China.

"I think it's a good time to bring up how did this stuff come through
and see what China says," Souder said. "There's no downside to trying
to call attention to it, to try to hold China accountable."

U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., said the Chinese government is
eager to put its best foot forward in preparing host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"They want things not only to look nice and look well, but they want
their country presented in the best possible light, and I think this
gives them a black eye," said Hooley, who authored legislation this
year to give U.S. officials greater oversight of the international
pseudoephedrine trade.

Larsen said the seizure reflects Mexico's effectiveness in reducing
legal imports of pseudoephedrine and blocking illicit smuggling of
the material into the country. But he said it also has a negative connotation.

"This can be seen as a bit of a feather in the cap of the Mexican
authorities, and we should be thankful for that," Larsen said. "But
it is also a recognition that there is a huge international
trafficking problem for chemical precursors for methamphetamine and
that we have a lot of work left to do."