National Drug Intelligence Center   Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Drug Market Analysis 2008   June 2008   UNCLASSIFIED

Production

Mexican DTOs and criminal groups in Jalisco, Sonora, and Sinaloa, Mexico produce most of the methamphetamine available in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. However, Mexican DTOs and criminal groups and, to a lesser extent, Caucasian and Asian criminal groups and independent producers in the HIDTA region produce significant, albeit decreasing, quantities of methamphetamine locally. El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) National Seizure System (NSS) data indicate that law enforcement officers seized fewer powder methamphetamine laboratories in 2007 (39)¹⁰ than in 2006 (102) or in 2005 (106), most of which were located in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties during each year. (See Table 3.) They also seized fewer ice conversion laboratories during those same periods--4 in 2007 as compared with 11 in 2006 and 9 in 2005. Most of the ice conversion laboratories seized during that 3-year period were located in Los Angeles County; in 2007 all of the ice conversion laboratories that were seized in the HIDTA region were located in Los Angeles County. The declines in both types of laboratories are attributed to the outsourcing of methamphetamine production, which was pushed into Mexico because it was easier and cheaper than local production, the result of stringent precursor chemical control regulations, successful law enforcement efforts, and public awareness campaigns in the United States. However, Mexican authorities increasingly are making the acquisition of precursor chemicals used to produce methamphetamine more difficult than they had previously, which may very likely cause additional near-term methamphetamine shortages in the HIDTA region and in the drug markets supplied by traffickers in Los Angeles--which include the U.S. Pacific, Southwest, Midwest, and Southeast Regions as well as the Pacific Rim nations.¹¹

Table 3. Small, Major, and Super Powder Methamphetamine and Ice Conversion Laboratory Seizures in the Los Angeles HIDTA Region, by County, 2005-2007^a

Source: El Paso Intelligence Center National Seizure System, current as of March 26, 2008.
a. Small laboratories are capable of producing less than 2 pounds of methamphetamine per production cycle. Major laboratories are capable of producing 2 to 9 pounds of methamphetamine per production cycle. Superlabs are capable of producing over 10 pounds of methamphetamine per production cycle.

Mexican methamphetamine producers started in 2006 to become increasingly savvy at concealing their drug production operations, and that trend is continuing. Many methamphetamine producers no longer share information with their counterparts, such as where and when they plan to cook methamphetamine at a major laboratory or superlab. Instead, these producers may only provide a map of an address in San Bernardino, for example, and wait until the last moment to inform their counterparts when the drug is ready to be picked up or delivered, primarily to avoid law enforcement interdiction. Others create elaborate underground laboratories in suburban locations to produce the drug. Regardless of the production method, Mexican DTOs and criminal groups rarely stockpile the drug in the Los Angeles HIDTA region; it is produced, often only partially, and then transported to another destination for further processing and/or distribution. In some cases, cooks attempt to destroy fingerprints and other evidence of their involvement with methamphetamine laboratories by setting fires to laboratory dumpsites before abandoning the sites or by using machinery to bury waste materials on the property around the laboratory site as the waste is produced. Such practices result in tremendous environmental damage and significant cleanup costs. According to the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, methamphetamine laboratory cleanup costs in the four Los Angeles HIDTA counties alone reached $277,642 in 2007 and accounted for nearly one-third (almost 33%) of the $845,340 spent in the 58 California counties combined that year.

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Mexican DTOs and criminal groups based in the Mexican states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Oaxaca, and Zacatecas produce most of the marijuana available in the Los Angeles HIDTA region; however, Mexican and, to a much lesser extent, Asian and Caucasian DTOs and criminal groups also produce significant quantities of domestic marijuana in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. Preliminary data from the Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program (DCE/SP) indicate law enforcement officials seized a total of 538,493 cannabis plants from indoor and outdoor grow sites in the Los Angeles HIDTA region in 2007,¹² an amount significantly higher than the 255,449 plants reported seized in 2006. Growers cultivate the largest number of cannabis plants outdoors--usually on federal public lands in the San Bernardino, Cleveland, and Angeles National Forests--and their cultivation levels in 2007 increased considerably when compared with 2006. (See Table 4.) To further compound the threat, many traffickers (mostly Mexican traffickers) conceal their drug crops and laboratories or laboratory wastes under trees¹³ or mix their crops within other thick vegetation in these forests. Los Angeles Police Department officers report that these growers increasingly are armed and/or booby-trap their cultivation sites and often use fertilizers that are poisonous to humans at grow sites, posing a serious threat to tenders, marijuana users, and law enforcement and other individuals who happen upon the sites. Preliminary DCE/SP data also suggest that growers are cultivating more cannabis indoors (including hydroponically) than they had previously--usually in private residences--which very likely is in response to an increasing demand for high-potency marijuana both in and outside the HIDTA region. Law enforcement reporting suggests that Asian DTOs and criminal groups are converting an increasing number of upscale homes in Corona and Norco (Riverside County); Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights, and Walnut (Los Angeles County); Garden Grove and Westminster (Orange County); Ontario (San Bernardino County); and in many other areas into cannabis grow operations. The growers managing one operation may also operate other grows nearby or be affiliated with those who operate those nearby grow sites. Many of these homes contain high levels of black mold from the extreme moisture necessary for successful grows and have high levels of carbon dioxide and altered electrical wiring that pose serious health and safety issues for law enforcement officers, private citizens, and those tending these indoor grows. (See text box.) To compound the problem even more, traffickers increasingly are breaking in to steal cannabis plants and/or processed marijuana from indoor grow sites, elevating the number of burglaries, robberies, and related violent crime in areas that previously had little to no drug-related violent crime.

Figure 2. Outdoor cannabis cultivation areas in the Los Angeles HIDTA region.

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Source: Drug Enforcement Administration's Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.

Table 4. Indoor and Outdoor Cannabis Plants Seized in the Los Angeles HIDTA Region, by County, 2006-2007

Source: Drug Enforcement Administration Domestic Eradication and Suppression Program.

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Law enforcement officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reportedly also stop a number of Asian cannabis cultivators crossing the U.S.-Canada border, some of whom are traveling from Canada to the Los Angeles area to further their cannabis cultivation operations. Once in Los Angeles, the cultivators typically educate other Asian traffickers on how to properly pollinate cannabis plants that yield high-potency cannabis (some with THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) levels ranging 15 to 20 percent) before returning home. These experienced Asian growers from Canada reportedly prefer to travel to Los Angeles and other U.S. locations to train their counterparts on how to cultivate high-potency cannabis because they believe it is less risky than smuggling large quantities of marijuana across the Northern Border for distribution.

African American and Hispanic criminal groups and street gangs, often Bloods and Crips sets, are the principal crack and PCP producers in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. They typically convert powder cocaine into crack cocaine in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods as needed for distribution, primarily to avoid stiff penalties associated with distribution of large quantities of the drug. They most often produce PCP in the Los Angeles, Compton, and North Long Beach areas of Los Angeles County and, more recently, in the high desert areas of San Bernardino County for local and national-level distribution. NSS data indicate that PCP traffickers are producing the drug less frequently than they had in 2006. (See Table 5.) However, anecdotal and law enforcement reporting suggests that PCP availability in the region is stable at levels unmatched anywhere else in the country, and that the drug's availability may actually be increasing. For example, some Los Angeles-based traffickers increasingly are supplying PCP to traffickers in other U.S. drug markets--notably Omaha and Washington, D.C. In January 2008 law enforcement officers in Tucumcari, New Mexico, seized 6.25 gallons of PCP that originated in Los Angeles and was destined for distribution in Washington, D.C. Any decline in PCP distribution can be associated with the arrests of key PCP producers in the HIDTA region.

Table 5. PCP Laboratory Seizures in the Los Angeles HIDTA Region, by County, 2005-2007

Source: El Paso Intelligence Center National Seizure System, current as of March 26, 2008.

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Transportation

Mexican DTOs and criminal groups, the principal drug transporters to the Los Angeles HIDTA region, exploit Mexican cartel-controlled plazas¹⁴ along the California-Mexico border to smuggle wholesale quantities of illicit drugs into the Los Angeles HIDTA region. Once in southern California, these traffickers as well as those who work on their behalf and various other traffickers--African American, Caucasian, Colombian, Salvadoran, Canadian, Chinese, Jamaican, Vietnamese, and other Asian criminal groups--transport illicit drugs to and through the HIDTA region, frequently overland on Interstates 5 and 15. They prefer these interstates because they can easily access each upon entrance at southern California and northwestern U.S.-Canada POEs, and link to numerous other U.S. drug markets by an intricate array of intersecting interstates and roadways. For example, they transport significant quantities of ice methamphetamine, Mexican black tar heroin, cocaine, and marijuana on I-15 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Drug traffickers--including those in Mexico, Europe, Asia and, most recently, Australia (see text box)--also smuggle illicit drugs to and through the international air and maritime ports¹⁵ situated in or near the Los Angeles HIDTA region or transport illicit drugs to and through the region using rail, bus, and package delivery services. For example, Israeli and Russian organized crime groups, the principal MDMA smugglers to the HIDTA region, typically smuggle the drug into the area from Europe by commercial aircraft or express consignment. In addition, on April 12, 2008, New Mexico Department of Public Safety officers working on a New Mexico HIDTA initiative seized 3 kilograms of cocaine in Gallup, New Mexico. The drugs allegedly originated in Los Angeles and were being transported to Tulsa on I-40 concealed in duffle bags on a bus. Traffickers also use similar means to transport drug proceeds in the reverse direction. Their versatility in transporting illicit drugs to and drug proceeds from the HIDTA region amplifies the Los Angeles HIDTA's significance as a national-level illicit drug transportation hub and transshipment center.

End Notes

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