METH LABS MOVE ON, BUT METH IMPORTING KEEPS ON GROWING

The plague of methamphetamine has changed its character in North
Carolina from a manufacturing problem to an importing problem but
continues to infect the state.

So-called superlabs were once rife here, but tough rules dried up the
supply of precursor chemicals and raids on labs shut many down. In
2001, almost 300 labs were seized. Between 2002 and 2006, seizures
fell by 73 percent. But demand for the drug hasn't abated. National
spending on meth now comes close to matching that on cocaine and
opiates combined.

To supply that lucrative appetite, the business has shifted to less
rigorously policed areas ---- especially Mexico. By 2004, Mexican drug
labs were importing 224 tons of pseudophedrine in about equal amounts
from India, China and Germany.

The drugs made in Mexico then enter pipelines feeding the United
States. They travel, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, by
private and commercial vehicles or by express parcel services. North
Carolina figures in the trade, DEA notes, because an increasing
population of Mexican origin "allows Mexican traffickers to
effectively conceal their activities within immigrant communities in
numerous North Carolina counties."

This is not a pretty picture and the scope and scale of the $25
billion illegal business makes enforcement a daunting international
challenge. Chemical suppliers must be stopped from exporting. Mexican
labs must be stopped from producing. The pipeline has to be disrupted
and street sales curtailed.

Of course, none of that would be necessary if Americans didn't create
a huge market for the drug. But Americans haven't just said no, and
efforts to persuade them to do so have been fitful and less than
successful. A lot more needs to be done.