Sgt. Melody Gamage of the Palm Beach County Narcotics Squad presented sobering information to our Citizen’s Academy group about the state of the drug trade at present.

Use of crack cocaine is going down. Prescription drug abuse is soaring. Oxycontin, Xanax and Valium are the drugs being used by young, old and mostly white people. Two sources: Some doctors are writing prescriptions illegally, and young people are finding these drugs in their own medicine cabinet from parent’s prescriptions. Deaths from overdosing these drugs are rising. It is imperative these drugs in the home be protected from family members that are not prescribed to use them.

Broward County doctors are writing more prescriptions than those in Palm Beach County. Regulations are a bit less rigid there. Law enforcement personnel are aware that people from Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee drive down to south Florida counties to pick up prescriptions for these drugs and sell them back in their states.

Narcotics department staff has found boats, and work trucks with hidden compartments used to smuggle cocaine and other drugs into Florida from Jamaica and Mexico. Some semi trailer trucks have been found with a false step up to the cab used as a hidden storage area to smuggle drugs. Drug lords in Mexico send a convoy of 25 cars into the United States loaded with drugs. If one car gets stopped and its load gets confisticated, the rest get through and those drugs are sold for street distribution.

Marijuana grow houses are prevalent in many parts of northern Palm Beach County. In 2007 plants worth $34.6 million were destroyed by the Narcotics Department.

Battling the drug trade is an uphill, never ending war for the Department. For further information go to www.pbso.org.

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