Soundbytes: Arizona’s war on drugs

PHOENIX — Recent activity along Arizona’s border with Mexico suggests that illegal drug trafficking is starting to reach the same problem status as illegal human trafficking.

Over the past decade, 80 percent of the nation’s methamphetamine production has been shifted to meth labs in Mexico. About 90 percent of the nation’s drugs come from the same country, and across the same border, says Elizabeth Kempshall, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Phoenix office.

Kempshall, 45, came to the Valley last fall from Houston. She has spent her entire 24-year career with the DEA as an undercover agent and administrator.

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INTERACTIVES

Elizabeth Kempshall, Arizona’s top DEA agent, speaks out on:

• Her drug-busting job

• Meth

• Steroids

• Online “pill mills”

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TZR recently caught up to Kempshall in her office and at a federal law enforcement shooting range near Interstate 17 and Carefree Highway north of Phoenix. [For the full story on Kempshall, her personal background, and what she intends to do about drugs in Arizona in the future, pick up a copy of the March 2008 issue of PHOENIX magazine.]

Her office has resources spread throughout the state, including Nogales, Yuma, Sierra Vista, Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff. She also has cooperation from local law enforcement agencies and state and federal prosecutors.

“Go on the offensive. Don’t go on the defense and wait for drugs to come across the border,” she says. “Because if I stay defensive, I’m going to miss drugs.”

Kempshall says the agency is rolling out a new public education campaign about steroids this spring in Phoenix, among other major U.S. cities. Two new tactical teams based in Tucson and Phoenix will try to infiltrate the illegal pharmaceutical industry on the Web.

But for meth, Kempshall says cooperation from the Mexican authorities is crucial. That’s because the majority of meth coming across Arizona’s border into the U.S. is being made and often shipped by the same groups behind drug and marijuana trafficking.

“Our fight against meth has been true law enforcement success, and for DEA in particular,” she says during a break from the firing line. “We’ve redirected what’s occuring in the meth business.”

Don’t be misled by the idea that enforcement has merely made meth an American import rather than ending the meth problem, Kempshall says. Now meth manufacturers have to make it across the border instead of making the drug in rural areas of the U.S. and shipping it throughout the region.

“If we can make it more difficult (to transport), then we can cost them more money,” Kempshall says. “And they’re in this for the money… . They have to go through that fatal funnel. I view that as a success story.”

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