Does methamphetamine now come in 22-lbs. bundles?
On Wednesday, two Orange County men were among five people arrested in Kern County after authorities seized about 22 pounds of crystal methamphetamine.
That's the same amount of the drug Border Patrol dogs sniffed out of a minivan at the San Clemente checkpoint on the 5 freeway on June 1.
A couple months ago, 24 lbs. of meth was confiscated at a checkpoint, and there was a 23-pounder shortly before that.
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In last Friday's bust, the unidentified 34-year-old driver was arrested, and the gubment says the meth hidden in the 1995 Toyota Previa's front bumper and frame rails is worth $445,000.
Up in Bakersfield, the Man claims the same amount of meth seized there is worth $1 million. Inflation or are they cooking the Walter White formula Blue Ice up there?
Arrested in Kern County were Joel Cabrera, 41, of La Habra, and Ignacio Vega, 42, of Santa Ana. So were Pedro Cardenas, 28, of
Oxnard; and Tijuana, Mexico's David Gonzalez, 22, and Eduardo Zepeda, 29.
Down here, the U.S. Customs Department is fixing the estimated street value of nearly 90 1/2 pounds of meth seized at Southern California border checkpoints the past couple weeks at $1.1 million. The size of some of those other hauls ranged from 3 pounds to 44 lbs.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.