THE MEXICAN CONNECTION

MEXICO CITY - The anti-drug operation was in the works for months. And
the news would be big, officials said. But when Mexican police burst
into a plush home in the capital's exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec
neighborhood last month, guided in part by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, they were taken aback.

They found stacks and stacks of crisp, green U.S. $100 bills. In
closets, in drawers, and suitcases. The attorney general's office
arranged the bills into a huge, bed-shaped platform, with Ben Franklin
beaming from a thousand eyes. The first estimate by authorities put
the take at $100 million. Then the bill-counting machines came in and
the figure topped $200 million. It was the biggest drug cash seizure
ever.

There was another surprise. The money did not belong to one of
Mexico's powerful drug cartels, nor did it represent profits from the
sale of traditional drugs such as Colombian cocaine, Mexican marijuana
and black-tar heroin. Rather, authorities said, it was amassed by a
naturalized Mexican from China, Zhenli Ye Gon, who is accused of using
his Asian contacts to illegally import the precursor drugs to make the
new star of the U.S. and Mexican drug markets: methamphetamine.

As a U.S. crackdown against meth labs and precursor chemicals has been
drying up domestic production in recent years, the Mexican cartels are
enthusiastically filling the void, U.S. and Mexican officials say.
Moreover, officials say, meth has advantages for the cartels over even
highly profitable cocaine. It is a highly addictive drug that can be
made at home, smuggled easily and reap huge profit margins.

Authorities seized weapons and $205 million last month - the biggest
drug seizure ever - from a home in Mexico City. Agents believe the
fortune was amassed by importing drugs that are used to make
methamphetamine. Like the nonamphetamine designer drug "cheese" that
is causing deaths in the Dallas area, cheap meth distributed through
existing drug channels may be the coming nightmare on both sides of
the border.

In September, police in Fort Worth reported a record seizure of
methamphetamine: more than 48 pounds, with a street value of $3
million. In March, a convicted methamphetamine dealer was charged with
the fatal shooting of a Dallas police officer, Senior Cpl. Mark Nix.
Mexican cartels are not just supplying demand for meth, a Mexican
official said, but creating it as well.

"What we are seeing is a manipulation of the drug markets," said
Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy director of international and legal
matters for Mexico's attorney general's office.

"It is a diabolical plan by these criminal organizations" to increase
sales of homemade amphetamines as an alternative to South American
cocaine, which must be grown, processed, and transported thousands of
miles. "The lesson we get from this is very painful," said Mr.
Vasconcelos. "The American people have yet to wake up from the
nightmare of synthetic drugs, especially the nightmare that has
brought them to methamphetamines." It costs 20 cents to make a dose of
meth that garners $20, he said in an interview. Amphetamines can be
taken as a pill, smoked as "ice," snorted as "crystal," or dissolved
in water like the club drug "ecstasy," or MDMA. Some of the varied
forms are old, some are new, but together they threaten to create new
U.S. addictions and financially strengthen the Mexican cartels and
their war against each other and the government.

DEA concerns "Methamphetamine is something we're very concerned about,
because we go back to our history in the early '80s when cocaine was
not a big deal here," said Steven M. Robertson, DEA special agent for
congressional and public affairs. "Then, all of a sudden, it took off,
and we were playing catch-up. DEA has learned from the cocaine flood
in the '80s and we're saying, OK, [with] methamphetamine, we don't
want to get to the point where they're bringing in thousand-kilo
amounts," he said in an interview.

The effects in Dallas, and across the U.S., could be devastating over
time. Meth addicts are infamous for their obsessive addictions and
failure to care for themselves, which causes their teeth to fall out
and leaves their emaciated bodies susceptible to illness. This is
especially true among those who inject or smoke the drug.

In contrast, ecstasy, an amphetamine derivative taken as a pill, is
best known as a "club drug" that causes hours of energy followed by
lethargy. Use of amphetamines has not exploded in the U.S., but the
promise of a drop-off due to the U.S. crackdown on precursor chemicals
and drug labs has not materialized - because of increased Mexican
supply. Rising addictions And hard-core addiction seems to be rising
quickly.

The U.S. Justice Department's "National Methamphetamine Threat
Assessment" found that while the total number of meth users had stayed
steady from 2002 to 2004 at about 600,000, the percentage of addicts
within that group had increased significantly.

The number of people admitted to programs for treatment of
methamphetamine-related drug use rose from about 68,000 in 2000 to
nearly 130,000 in 2004, the report said.

One reason, it suggests, is the influx of Mexican ice methamphetamine,
similar in its addictive qualities to crack cocaine. "Smoking
methamphetamine may result in more rapid addiction to the drug than
snorting or injection, because smoking causes a nearly instantaneous,
intense, and longer-lasting high," the report said. Seizures of ice
along the Southwest border rose from 260 pounds in fiscal 2003 to
nearly 1,500 pounds in 2005.

U.S. and Mexican officials do not agree on Mexico's role in meth
production. A.J. Turner, section chief for the FBI's criminal
investigative division, said in an interview that Mexican cartels are
the source of 85 percent to 90 percent of the methamphetamine in the
U.S., according to the agency's intelligence. "The supply is on the
Mexican side; the demand is on the United States side," he said.

Mr. Vasconcelos said suggestions that Mexico had become the dominant
supplier to the U.S. were false. While U.S. meth lab seizures number
in the thousands each year, Mexico raids about 100 labs annually, he
said. He described Mexico as an "incipient" producer that is now
cracking down on the illegal import of precursor chemicals, such as
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Mexico needs about 70 tons a year of
pseudoephedrine for legal drugs but has imported as much as 240 tons
year. It is now getting a handle on imports, although China remains a
problem, he said. Likewise, all ephedrine and pseudoephedrine coming
into Mexico - 100 percent - passes through U.S. ports such as Long
Beach before arriving in Mexico. Finger-pointing by U.S. officials,
Mr. Vasconcelos said, only plays into the cartels' hands.

"The challenge here is to see ourselves as the community that we are;
to see ourselves as neighbors," he said.

More labs in Mexico According to the U.S. government's 2007
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, more methamphetamine
labs are turning up on Mexican soil, and increasing amounts of the
drug are being seized. "Seizure statistics for cocaine and
methamphetamine during 2006 demonstrate Mexico's significance as a
production and transit country," the report says. The suspect in the
huge cash seizure in mid-March, Zhenli Ye Gon, was an important
middleman for Mexican cartels because he was importing massive
quantities of pseudoephedrine, a common cold medicine that can be
easily transformed into amphetamine, Mexican authorities said. Mr.
Vasconcelos said the suspect appeared to be a legitimate businessman
who found a profitable side business diverting pseudoephedrine to
Mexican and U.S. meth producers. The fact that he was unable to
launder the $205 million found in his home shows that Mexican bank
controls are working. Zhenli Ye Gon, the attorney general's office
said, ran a pharmaceutical company, Unimed Pharm Chem de Mexico, that
illegally imported more than 60 tons of pseudoephedrine, which he
processed into its purest form. Authorities say he was building a
45,000-square-foot laboratory near Mexico City, which officials have
now dismantled.

The suspect got the attention of U.S. and Mexican officials in a big
way in December when they seized 19 tons of pseudoephedrine in the
port of Lazaro Cardenas, the biggest Mexican seizure ever. The ship
carrying it came from China and had passed through the port of Long
Beach on its way to Mexico. The ensuing investigation, "Operation
Dragon," led officials not only to the $205 million and the laboratory
under construction, but also to seven suspects and additional residences.

Zhenli Ye Gon remains a fugitive while Mexican authorities divide up
the confiscated cash, one-third of which is to go toward drug
treatment.

DRUG USE: A SNAPSHOT According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, methamphetamine is second only to marijuana of illegal
drugs used most frequently in many Western and Midwestern states.
Nationwide, it still trails cocaine among regular users.

Number of regular drug users: 19.7 million
Marijuana users: 14.6 million
Cocaine users: 2.4 million
Methamphetamine users: 600,000
"Ecstasy" (MDMA) users: 500,000
SOURCE: 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services

DEFINITIONS
Amphetamines: A general term used to describe a family of synthetic drugs
that boost energy and stimulate brain activity, enhancing mood and
alertness. They have been used legally as mental stimulants and as diet
pills. Currently, their legal uses in the U.S. include treatment of
attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy.

Methamphetamine: A highly potent stimulant with long-lasting effects that
make it very addictive, like cocaine. It is the most popular illegal
amphetamine and takes several forms, such as pills, a white powder, or clear
chunky crystals that can be snorted or smoked (known as "crystal" or "ice").
.According to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 10.4 million
Americans 12 and older had tried methamphetamine at least once.
"Ecstasy": Also called MDMA for its chemical name (the "a" stands for
amphetamine), ecstasy is a stimulant that also has some of the hallucinatory
effects of mescaline, the active ingredient in peyote. It is often called a
"club drug" or a "love drug" for the energy and positive mood it creates.
.More than 11 million people have tried MDMA at least once, according to the
2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

SOURCES: National Institute on Drug Abuse; U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration ON TV For more on the Mexican meth connection, see
Angela Kocherga's report at 10 p.m. Sunday on WFAA (Channel 8).