NMI ‘ice’ trade has new supplier

Chinese traffickers of methamphetamine or “ice” now control most of the illegal drug operations in the CNMI, particularly on Tinian where it is now a big problem, according to the Department of Public Safety.

This is why most “ice” traffickers arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force and DPS Narcotics Unit the past few months are Chinese nationals, said Commissioner Claudio K. Norita and Police Sergeant Alfred Celes

“It’s the business of it. The Chinese need to flood the market with cheap buys, with cheap merchandize and they wipe out the competition. It’s all that it is,” said Norita in Friday’s news briefing, during which he and Celes discussed the arrest last week of three Chinese men for alleged “ice” trafficking on Saipan.

Celes disclosed that based on their intelligence information and investigation, the main supply of “ice” in the CNMI is coming from China.

Celes said some in the intelligence community are also saying that the main supply is from North Korea and is being transported through Thailand.

He said the purity of the “ice” being sold in the CNMI is high because Chinese laboratories have become sophisticated at producing this type of “ice.”

In the past, those arrested in the CNMI for “ice” trafficking were mostly Japanese, locals, and Filipinos. Only a few Chinese were arrested then.

Celes said that during his training in Carson City in 2006, he gathered from a lot of narcotics investigators that “ice” is now the illegal drug of choice worldwide and that Chinese makers are taking over the market with highly pure “ice.”

He believes that in the United States what’s being done mainly is home cooking of “ice” that is smuggled in from Mexico. The purity, however, is low at 70 to 80 percent.

In the CNMI, Celes said, the “ice” purity is 95 percent and up.

“It’s rare when we get 95 percent. It’s usually 98 and 99 percent. The purity is very high,” he said.

Celes said “ice” in the United States is very cheap, which is why it is now the leading illegal drug being used.

Many Chinese drug traffickers were recently arrested not only Saipan but also on Tinian and Rota.

Celes said that based on their operations on Tinian, they learned that the prices of “ice” have been lowered because there is just so much supply.

“A ‘plate’ of ice here would probably be $50 to $70. Down on Tinian it would like $20 to $30. There’s a lot,” he said.

The street value of “ice” on Saipan is reportedly $500 a gram.

Fortunately, Norita said, there is no “ice” laboratory yet in the CNMI as most of the methamphetamine coming here is being shipped through cargo containers or hand-carried aboard planes.

The commissioner called on all law enforcers to work together to capture “ice” carriers at entry points such as airports and seaports “because the border tends to be the smallest amount of the funnel coming to the CNMI.”

Norita said once “ice” enters the border and reaches the streets, it is more difficult for the police to pick up the drugs.

“So the emphasis is on border interdiction, the airports and seaports. To me that’s the most prudent approach to interdicting methamphetamine,” he said.

Norita said once these traffickers establish laboratories here, it’s going to be harder for law enforcers.

“But I think right now with the [low] value, it is cheaper to ship it in rather than build up your labs and so forth,” Norita said.