National Drug Intelligence Center   Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Drug Market Analysis 2009   March 2009   UNCLASSIFIED

Strategic Drug Threat Developments

• Local methamphetamine production may be increasing in southern Colorado in response to a shortage of Mexican ice methamphetamine. Local producers and criminal groups are circumventing pseudoephedrine sales restrictions by making multiple small-quantity purchases of products that contain pseudoephedrine for use in production operations.
  
• Controlled prescription drug (CPD) abuse is a significant and rapidly growing threat in the Rocky Mountain HIDTA region. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that Utah leads the nation in nonmedical painkiller abuse. Additionally, treatment providers in Utah report that CPD overdoses accounted for the deaths of over 300 individuals in the state last year.
  
• The high demand for marijuana has prompted Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) to continue to transport large quantities of marijuana from Mexico and to expand their cannabis cultivation operations in the HIDTA region. Mexican criminal groups operate large outdoor cannabis plots, often composed of several thousand plants, particularly on public lands. As such, Mexican traffickers are able to respond to market demands and achieve higher profit margins.

HIDTA Overview

The Rocky Mountain HIDTA encompasses 34 designated counties in Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. The region contains large metropolitan areas as well as expansive, sparsely populated areas, including public and tribal lands. (See Figure 1 in Preface.) The HIDTA region is located between major drug source areas in Mexico and Canada and is linked by interstate highways to major domestic drug markets across the United States. Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah, are the three largest metropolitan areas and serve as distribution centers for other regional drug markets as well as transshipment points for drugs supplied to markets in the Midwest and the eastern United States.

Rural areas of the Rocky Mountain HIDTA region, including 27 national forests and national grasslands, provide traffickers with an opportunity to avoid detection as they engage in illicit activities, such as drug smuggling, cannabis cultivation and, to a lesser extent, powder methamphetamine production. Additionally, drug smuggling from Canada through remote areas in the northern area of the HIDTA region is a particular concern for law enforcement agencies. The 585-mile U.S.-Canada border in Montana has 15 official ports of entry (POEs)1 as well as hundreds of easily accessible, unofficial crossings that are often used by traffickers to transport drugs from Canada into the region using private and commercial vehicles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), snowmobiles, private aircraft, and couriers who transport the drugs on foot.

Footnote

1. The ports of entry (POEs) are based on those listed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Office of Border Patrol (OBP).

End of page.