DEA: Mexican drug cartels operating in Tennessee, all 50 states
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Mexican drug cartels are operating in Tennessee and every other state in the country, according to a report from the DEA.
The DEA’s map of cartel prevalence in every state shows Tennessee ranks in the middle of the pack, which didn’t surprise Jordan Breedlove, a narcotics agent with the 18th Judicial District Drug and Violent Crime Taskforce.
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“Nashville is growing rapidly as a major source city in the narcotics trafficking business,” Breedlove said. “One of the most major source cities on the eastern coast, I would venture to guess.”
A source city, according to Breedlove, is a place where smugglers can receive large shipments of drugs to be redistributed to lower-level dealers.
“You may have a large shipment of narcotics come straight from the border directly into Nashville, and then broken down from there, and then distributed across the state or across this Middle Tennessee region into smaller amounts,” Breedlove explained.
Breedlove often patrols interstates north of Nashville looking for signs of drug trafficking. He said he will often make a drug-related arrest a week, with larger arrests happening once a month or every few weeks.
“All of your major interstates are going to be the main ways that these narcotics are trafficked or transported across the country,” he said. “[I-65} is a main thoroughfare, from the southern part of the country, all the way up to the northern states and major cities like Detroit and Chicago, so on and so forth.”
SEE ALSO: Putnam County couple killed in shootout with Texas officers following big rig chase
Breedlove said there is no trend to the types of people he arrests for trafficking.
In fact, last week, a married couple from Putnam County was killed in Texas while driving a big rig truck.
Putnam County Sheriff Eddie Farris said the couple had made a drug deal with a cartel in Mexico and got in a shootout with Texas law enforcement on the highway.
“I have arrested people of all different ages. Doesn’t matter race, sex, or nationality, unfortunately, because it is such a lucrative business,” Breedlove said.
According to the DEA, two main cartels have wiped out all other trafficking competition in the United States: the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
“The shift from plant-based drugs, like heroin and cocaine, to synthetic, chemical-based drugs, like fentanyl and methamphetamine, has resulted in the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
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Breedlove said he often sees fentanyl mixed with other drugs, which can result in an accidental overdose.
“What scares me is all the counterfeit narcotics out there, counterfeit pills with the younger adults and youth getting a hold of them thinking it’s one thing and it’s completely not,” he said. “We’re seeing [fentanyl] mixed in with methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine; we’re even finding it in vape, cartridges, and marijuana,” he said.
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