America's 'last best place' overrun by Mexican cartels as drugs flood into state
More than 1,300 miles from the southern border, cartels are flooding Montana, sometimes referred to as “the last best place” in America with fentanyl and meth.
Enormous profit margins mean that the rugged state, often associated with wilderness and spectacular nature has become the new focus for Mexican drug gangs intent on flooding Montana with super strong methamphetamine and lethal fentanyl.
The reason the gangs have chosen to target an area so far from the border is simple, it comes down to money. While a fentanyl pill, manufactured for 25 cents in Mexico will fetch $3 to $5 in urban US cities, the same pill can sell for as much as $100 in parts of Montana.
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Montana has been described as America's 'last best place' (Getty Images)Cartels have had a particularly devastating impact on Montana's Indian reservations - where traffickers trap Native Americans in a cycle of addiction and debt. Cartel associates form relationships with Indigenous women to gain access to communities in order to get the locals hooked on drugs.
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Crimes and overdoses are surging in these communities, tribal leaders say. Stephanie Iron Shooter, the American Indian health director for the Montana Department of Health and Human Services said the cartels “know who to choose” to gain access. “Just like any other prey-predator situation - that's how it is,” she explained.
The low levels of law enforcement and historical high levels of drug addiction in reservations makes them an optimal target for cartels and drug gangs. The rate of opioid overdose deaths in Montana almost tripled between 2017 and 2020 and the rate of overdose deaths among Native Americans was twice the number of white residents, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Ricardo Ramos Medina, a former Mexican police officer working for the Sinaloa cartel, planned to run drugs to Montana (Missoula Detention Center)Cartels have trapped Native Americans into becoming dealers themselves by turning them into addicts with a debt to the cartels they cannot afford to pay off other than by selling drugs themselves.
In March 2020 police arrested Ricardo Ramos Medina, a former Mexican police officer working for the Sinaloa cartel, with a sack containing two pounds of pure methamphetamine which he planned to drive all the way from San Diego to Montana. This one arrest led to the dismantling of an entire trafficking ring that had brought at least 2,000 pounds of meth and 700,000 fentanyl-laced pills into Montana from Mexico over just three years.
Fentanyl pills can sell for 20 times more in Montana (USAO District of Montana)“You're as far north as you can get in the United States, and yet we have the cartel here,” said Jesse Laslovich, the U.S. attorney for Montana.
Marvin Weatherwax, Jr., who serves on the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and represents the 15th district in the Montana House of Representatives, said “Right now it's as if fentanyl is raining on our reservation”.
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