Officials at US-Mexico border seize $10.3m in meth hidden in lettuce shipment

The numbers don't work here. Let's start from the top:

A press release from CBP officials called the seized drugs and lettuce “a salad unfit for this year’s Thanksgiving table”, adding that the 500 packages of meth in question weighed about 1,153lbs.

Cute. Who eats salad on Thanksgiving, anyway?

Regardless, we have $8,933/pound here. Which is a nice number, I guess, but if you're buying meth by the pound, you aren't paying street prices. This works out to $558/ounce. And again, if you're buying meth by the ounce, you aren't the end user.

So, that's about $20/gram, which isn't exactly a high price. They could have claimed four times the street value and had it still be in the ballpark.

Here's the problem:

Meanwhile, in August 2024, about two tonnes of the powerful stimulant known colloquially as crystal meth was seized in packages designed to look like bright green watermelons at the San Diego, California, port of Otay.

Hidden amongst a shipment of actual watermelons, about 1,220 fake watermelons were found to contain 4,587lbs of meth valued at $5m after a truck driven by a 29-year-old man was selected for secondary inspection.

OK, so that's $1,090/pound. Roughly an order of magnitude less. (~$68/ounce or $2.43/gram, which is just not pricing reality squares with)

A friendly reminder that when the news parrots law-enforcement claims about numbers, you really want an editor on hand (in this case, one who curiously has knowledge of meth pricing). They'll happily tout a huge haul that's a drop in the bucket in actuality, but we're not stenographers; we're supposed to put effort into reporting.

Though I do admire the audacity of making fake watermelons to deal drugs.