National Drug Intelligence Center   Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Drug Market Analysis 2009   April 2009

Strategic Drug Threat Developments

• Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) based in the Los Angeles HIDTA region control most of the drug operations in the region and use the Los Angeles HIDTA region as a transshipment center for the movement of illicit drugs to other drug markets throughout the United States.
   
• Methamphetamine, marijuana, powder cocaine, and heroin seizures in the Los Angeles HIDTA region increased in 2008, resulting in wholesale price increases for methamphetamine, high-potency marijuana, and powder cocaine. Despite the increases in heroin seizures and expanding trafficking operations through the HIDTA region to heroin markets in the Great Lakes and eastern states, prices remain stable, thereby indicating that heroin production in Mexico increased.
   
• Methamphetamine production in the Los Angeles HIDTA region increased in 2008, demonstrated by an increase in the number of large-scale production laboratories seized in the region and supported by law enforcement reports of the rising availability of precursor chemicals obtained through organized "smurfing"1 operations in the Los Angeles HIDTA region and in neighboring states.
   
• Outdoor cannabis cultivation, principally by Mexican groups, in the Los Angeles HIDTA region increased in 2008. Growers cultivate the largest number of cannabis plants outdoors--usually on federal public lands in the San Bernardino, Cleveland, and Angeles National forests.

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HIDTA Overview

The Los Angeles HIDTA region--composed of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties--is one of the most populous regions in the country, with almost 17 million residents2 in more than 32,000 square miles of territory. It is a principal production, transportation, and distribution center for illicit drugs available in the HIDTA region and in many other U.S. drug markets supplied by traffickers in the Los Angeles area, including Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Memphis, Tennessee; Miami, Florida; New York, New York; Omaha, Nebraska; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle and Yakima, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Washington, D.C.

Drug traffickers often exploit the region's unique geographic composition for illicit drug production--typically methamphetamine production, cannabis cultivation, crack conversion, and PCP (phencyclidine) production. The Inland Empire, which encompasses both San Bernardino and Riverside counties, is made up of thriving metropolitan areas as well as sparsely populated rural area. (See Figure 1.) San Bernardino is the largest county by area in the United States,3 and Riverside ranks fourth, which makes detection of methamphetamine laboratories and cannabis fields difficult. Traffickers can maintain robust cannabis crops because of ideal climate conditions in the HIDTA region. In addition, Asian (particularly Vietnamese) DTOs and criminal groups and a number of other traffickers cultivate significant and increasing quantities of high-potency cannabis indoors, particularly in upscale suburban neighborhoods, where most residents have little interaction with their neighbors. Most of the region's crack and PCP production occurs in inner-city neighborhoods; however, PCP is also produced in the high desert areas of San Bernardino County.

Mexican DTOs and criminal groups, the principal transporters of illicit drugs, smuggle multihundred-kilogram quantities of marijuana, ice methamphetamine,4 cocaine, Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin, and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy)5 from Mexico to southern California--often through ports of entry (POEs) located in the San Diego area--using private and commercial vehicles and couriers on foot. Once in southern California, these traffickers usually transport illicit drugs to the Los Angeles HIDTA region in private, rental, and commercial vehicles, using the region's highly developed interstate highway system (Interstates 5, 10, 15, 40, and 215) and other roadways. During each phase of this process, traffickers rely on their close associations with friends and family members residing on both sides of the California-Mexico border--a border located just 90 miles south of Orange and Riverside counties--to ensure that the flow of illicit drugs from origin to destination is uninterrupted. (See Figure 1.) As a result, the Los Angeles HIDTA region is one of the most significant gateways for illicit drugs available in the United States, because illicit drugs that are smuggled across the California-Mexico border for distribution in and outside the area typically pass through drug markets located in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. Most of the bulk cash and monetary instruments generated by drug traffickers and other criminals in the HIDTA region and a significant portion of the drug proceeds generated in many other U.S. locations are smuggled overland from the area into Mexico for many of the same reasons that traffickers use the HIDTA region as a base for drug smuggling activities.

The Los Angeles HIDTA region also has one of the largest and most diverse economies in the world and is home to major industries, which have factories and regional headquarters located in the region. It also has highly desired entertainment and sporting events that attract wealthy residents as well as tens of millions of tourists each year. Additionally, drug traffickers' money laundering capabilities are enhanced by the region's highly developed banking and financial centers.

Footnotes

1. Smurfing is a method used by some methamphetamine traffickers to acquire large quantities of precursor chemicals. Methamphetamine producers purchase the chemicals in quantities at or below legal thresholds from multiple retail locations. Methamphetamine producers often enlist the assistance of several friends or associates in smurfing operations to increase the speed of the operation and the quantity of chemicals acquired.
2. U.S. Census estimates indicate that approximately 46 percent of all California residents reside in the Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) region.
3. San Bernardino County is larger in area than each of the nine smallest states in the country.
4. Ice methamphetamine is methamphetamine that has been crystallized from powder methamphetamine.
5. According to officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Southwestern Regional Laboratory, some drug seizures that are believed to be MDMA tablets actually contain only methamphetamine or methamphetamine/MDMA combinations. Most of these tablets originate in Canada.

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