MARICOPA COUNTY SHIFTING METH STRATEGY, TARGETING SMUGGLING

There was a time when methamphetamine was the biggest drug menace in
Maricopa County and resources against meth use were aligned
appropriately.

Millions of dollars were spent on public-relations campaigns to
highlight the dangers of meth, through televised specials,
public-service announcements and those ominous-looking posters
depicting a meth user's decline through the years.

Although meth use is still a concern in Arizona, the drug's production
has declined enough that a county task force charged with eradicating
meth has started to concentrate on a new menace: organizations
smuggling meth and other drugs through a well-traveled corridor along
Interstate 8 to get their cargo from Mexico to locations across the
United States.

The decline in meth-lab seizures across Arizona has been dramatic,
down from 130 incidents in 2004 to five in 2010, according to the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Experts say legislation and law enforcement in the past five years
have made it more difficult for cooks to purchase pseudoephedrine and
operate large-scale labs in the United States.

The drop in Arizona meth-lab activity has not ended the public-health
threat that the drug poses: Drug-induced hospital visits linked to
amphetamine usage ranked third in the state in 2008, after opiates and
cocaine, and law enforcement in Arizona ranked methamphetamine as the
greatest drug threat in the state in a 2010 survey. The state remains
a distribution hub for meth and other drugs, and although meth-use has
fallen in line with the rest of the country, it is still high, both
factors that lead investigators to believe meth production could
return to the state as quickly as it has fallen.

Still, the decrease in lab activity has left the 10-agency task force,
which consists of officers from the Tempe, Mesa and Phoenix police
departments, along with the state Department of Public Safety and
Pinal and Maricopa County sheriff's offices, focusing on trafficking
organizations with smuggling routes that begin in Mexico and run
through Arizona.

"Isn't it easier to go down here and get (drug loads) on the road
versus getting them after they've come into town?" asked Lt. Steve
Bailey, a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy and task-force commander.

The task force uses techniques familiar to urban narcotics officers
and fans of police-crime dramas, including wiretaps, undercover
informants and sting operations.

But the officers use those techniques along an area 45 minutes south
of the Valley that stretches from Gila Bend to Casa Grande and
requires equipment, including camouflage fatigues and night-vision
goggles, more familiar to fans of war films.

The foe for the former meth-task-force officers has changed from
simple meth cooks to sophisticated drug-trafficking organizations that
have installed their own radio transponders in southern Arizona
mountain ranges and use solar-powered radios to stay connected in the
desert for days.

"Those are M4s (military rifles), and they're every bit as capable as
our guns," Bailey said, looking through evidence photos from recent
drug seizures. "Sometimes, you don't see that many guns (in the
Valley) in a month."