In case you haven't been paying attention, California's pointless skirmish over medical marijuana has only made the state even more attractive to our friendly drug cartels operating south of the border. In recent months, not a week has gone by without huge busts at the San Clemente checkpoint, or some weed-filled panga being intercepted after dark anywhere from Crystal Cove to Malibu. Some guy even crashed a yacht full of pot in Newport Harbor not too long ago.
Because of these reliably frequent reminders of the futility of the war on drugs, we're starting a new weekly column to keep score: “Bong Blotter's Epic Drug Bust of the Week.”
Our first installment comes courtesy of the San Clemente Patch, which is usually the first on the scene whenever that city's immigration checkpoint turns up something big. And this one is a doozy, folks.
]
On April 10, Patch reports, Border Patrol agents stopped a truck carrying a metal security door. When a drug-sniffing dog signaled a hit, the agents inspected the door, and found that it had been stuffed with a smorgasbord of drugs.
“Agents searched the vehicle and discovered bundles of narcotics stuffed inside the metal security door,” the agency's press release states. Of the 63 bundles of drugs, 41 contained methamphetamine, while 16 were stuffed with coke and six had heroin. According to the Border Patrol, the drugs weighed 116.95 pounds and would have sold on the street for a whopping $1,385,320.
That's one hell of a door. The crazy thing is that this bust came just a day or so after the feds found more than 50 pounds of coke in another vehicle. The identity of the driver of the second truck hasn't been identified, but Patch says the first one involved a “brother-sister” duo from Mexico.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Email:
ns****@oc******.com
. Twitter: @NickSchou. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).