Drug official calls city narcotics hub - DEA agent compares Denver metro area with FedEx for dope

By Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

February 20, 2006

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0%2C1299%2CDRMN_15_4481409%2C00.html

Hidden in spare tires, truck transmissions and almost every other secret compartment and crevice imaginable, packages of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana are making their way north each day from the porous U.S.-Mexico border and changing hands in the Denver metro area before heading east on the country's major interstates.

The metro area has emerged as such a major hub for contraband that the region's top drug enforcement officer says Denver is to illegal drugs what Memphis, Tenn., is to Federal Express. It's a home office for shipping and distribution.

"We're seeing that Denver has become a desirable place for Mexican drug-trafficking organizations as their first major stop in the U.S.," said Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Denver field division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "We believe this region is starting to be the hub."...

...Mexican drug gangs are sending their goods up Interstate 25 to the metro area, where they are either warehoused or sent straight through, along interstates 76 and 70 and other lateral transportation arteries to the Midwest and East Coast, Sweetin said....

The trend has become a full-fledged phenomenon over the past few years, as the majority of the international drug traffic into the United States has shifted to the U.S.-Mexico border, Sweetin said.

Today, about 80 percent of illegal drugs in the U.S. are imported through Mexico, while most of the remainder still come through Florida, DEA officials believe....

Denver is only 12 hours by car up I-25 from El Paso. It's immediately accessible to I-70 and I-76, and it's within a few hours' drive of I-40 to the south and I-80 to the north.

Denver's population is also at least one-third Hispanic. Drug smugglers from Mexico don't stick out in the metro area, and they often have family members they can stay with....

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