OFFICIALS - CUT OFF METH AT SOURCE

Drug Crossing Border, Witnesses Tell Feds

LOVELAND -- Northern Colorado officials on Friday asked the federal
government for help combating methamphetamine.

One suggestion: Close the borders and cut off the source.

The highly addictive drug is taking over communities, tearing apart
families, monopolizing law enforcement efforts, contributing to
violent and property crimes and affecting employers, the officials
said during a congressional hearing Friday in Loveland.

Three district attorneys from northern Colorado, a sheriff, a drug
task force commander, a Larimer County commissioner and the wife of a
user who started support groups acknowledged at the hearing that the
problems caused by meth use, and possible solutions, are complex.

Communities need treatment, prevention, intervention and more money
to battle the drug, they said.

But communities also need help cutting off the source.

In Colorado, the largest source is Mexico, said Lt. Craig Dodd,
commander of the Larimer County Drug Task Force.

About 80 percent of the drug consumed in the state comes from Mexico,
traveling up Interstate 25 then east and west on Interstates 70 and
76. The statistic is based on a drop in small clandestine labs, as
well as information gleaned in investigations, the officials said.

Five witnesses at the hearing -- law enforcement officers and
prosecutors -- all suggested that tighter border security is a
necessary weapon in the battle.

However, Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, questioned that assertion.
Souder attended the hearing with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, whose 4th
Congressional District includes Longmont and Loveland.

After visiting a southern Border Patrol post and seeing confiscated
heroin and marijuana, he said he isn't sure.

"They're not getting any meth at the border," Souder said. "Why not?"

Is it, instead, coming from Canada? he asked. Are illegal immigrants
carrying it to the United States as passage fare?

All local investigation, said Dodd, Denver Drug Enforcement
Administration agent Jeffrey Sweetin and Weld County Sheriff John
Cooke, points to it coming north from Mexico into northern Colorado counties.

They could not say how it is getting past patrols, just that it is
and that federal help is needed.

"We have to have border enforcement with all the drugs coming into
our country," Musgrave agreed. "I daresay we have to focus on our
northern borders as well."