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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2006 
Mexico Halts Meth Chemical at Pacific Port
 Steve Suo - The Oregonian
Mexican officials inspecting a cargo container shipped from China have uncovered a 19.5-ton cache of pseudoephedrine, enough to make a dose of methamphetamine for every adult American.
Hundreds of barrels containing the essential meth ingredient were seized Dec. 5 at the Lazaro Cardenas seaport in Michoacan after a citizen tip, according to Mexico's attorney general. It was the largest seizure of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine in Mexican history and one of the biggest on record worldwide.
The 19.5 metric tons amount to 8 percent of the 233 metric tons of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine that China manufactured in 2005, according to Chinese government statistics compiled by Guangzhou CCM Chemical Co. Ltd.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said the massive leakage of pseudoephedrine from Chinese commerce underscores that "we need to go to the source" and ensure the chemical is as tightly controlled in China as it is in North America.
"It cries out for law enforcement attention being paid to the entire supply chain," said Larsen, co-chairman of the congressional Methamphetamine Caucus.
Such an enormous seizure suggests that Mexican traffickers, struggling under tight restrictions on legal imports of pseudoephedrine in Mexico, have found illicit sources in the handful of countries that manufacture the chemical.
In 2005, The Oregonian reported that Mexico's pharmaceutical industry was legally importing about twice as much as the country needed for cold medicine. The demand was inflated by traffickers who bought up millions of pseudoephedrine tablets.
Mexico improves
Since then, Mexican authorities have slashed imports of pseudoephedrine by 70 percent to 70 tons, making it harder for traffickers to acquire pseudoephedrine from legitimate drug companies within Mexico.
New restrictions announced recently in Mexico also have capped the size of any pseudoephedrine shipment at 1,100 pounds, meaning the Michoacan load was 39 times the allowable amount.
As a result of the restrictions in North America, traffickers increasingly must find middlemen within India and China to divert bulk pseudoephedrine from legitimate commerce. In the case of the pseudoephedrine in Michoacan, the chemical was mislabeled as "hydroxy benzyl-n-methyl-acetamide." The barrels arrived on a British-flagged freighter that stopped over in Long Beach, Calif., on its way from China.
International authorities say that despite Chinese laws requiring manufacturers to keep records and sell to only licensed brokers, the chemical repeatedly has reached Chinese middlemen who relabel the material and smuggle it out to traffickers in Asia.
Question for China
China "may have very stringent laws, but the question is whether those stringent laws are enforced properly and monitored properly," Wong Hoy Yuen, head of the United Nations project on precursor chemicals in East Asia, said in an interview with The Oregonian earlier this year.
U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., outgoing chairman of the House government reform subcommittee on narcotics, said this week that the 19.5-ton seizure in Mexico may be an opportunity for U.S. officials to press the case with China.
"I think it's a good time to bring up how did this stuff come through and see what China says," Souder said. "There's no downside to trying to call attention to it, to try to hold China accountable."
U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., said the Chinese government is eager to put its best foot forward in preparing host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
"They want things not only to look nice and look well, but they want their country presented in the best possible light, and I think this gives them a black eye," said Hooley, who authored legislation this year to give U.S. officials greater oversight of the international pseudoephedrine trade.
The downside
Larsen said the seizure reflects Mexico's effectiveness in reducing legal imports of pseudoephedrine and blocking illicit smuggling of the material into the country. But he said it also has a negative connotation.
"This can be seen as a bit of a feather in the cap of the Mexican authorities, and we should be thankful for that," Larsen said. "But it is also a recognition that there is a huge international trafficking problem for chemical precursors for methamphetamine and that we have a lot of work left to do."
Steve Suo: 503-221-8288; stevesuo@news.oregonian.com |
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