Cocaine Crackdowns Cut Supply, Raise Price : Narcotics: A kilogram of the drug was priced at $13,000 in the county last year, authorities said. Now it sells for about $28,000.

Wholesale cocaine prices in Ventura County have more than doubled and large quantities of the drug are much harder to find as a result of law enforcement’s crackdown on Colombian drug dealers, the county’s top narcotics officer said Monday.

Lt. Paul Anderson of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said that large cocaine seizures in the United States last year and the combined efforts of federal and local law enforcement agencies in the county also helped account for the diminishing supplies locally.

“Wholesale prices have skyrocketed,” Anderson said. “We haven’t seen these types of price increases and unavailability for a long time.”

Last year a kilogram of cocaine, or about 2.2 pounds of the drug, was priced at about $13,000 in Ventura County, he said. Six months ago, it was $20,000. Now, he said, a kilo sells in the county for about $28,000.

Anderson’s observations echo last week’s declaration by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency that shortages in wholesale cocaine supplies have been noted across the United States.

The DEA report to the Senate Judiciary Committee said that the prices dealers are paying have surged in recent months and that the purity of the wholesale product also has declined. The DEA also attributed the change to law enforcement pressure in South America.

In explaining the Ventura County shortages, Anderson also noted several large seizures of cocaine in the past year.

Last August, a Simi Valley police investigation led to the seizure in Los Angeles County of 2,068 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $94 million. And in September, federal authorities seized 20 tons of cocaine, with a street value of up to $20 billion, from a warehouse in Sylmar.

But despite the reported shortages that have ensued, officials are still seeing multi-kilo deliveries of cocaine into the county, said Bill Modesitt, the agent in charge of the DEA office that covers Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

“We’re still seeing people talking about having 100 kilos and we are seizing five- and six-kilo amounts,” Modesitt said. “Those are substantial amounts for Ventura County, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.”

Indeed, Modesitt said that the increased pressure in Los Angeles against the wholesale distributors might have forced them into the Ventura area. About a week ago, the DEA seized five kilos of cocaine in Oxnard and arrested three Oxnard men and a Los Angeles supplier, Modesitt said.

The men originally promised to deliver 100 kilos but might have been scared off from the $2-million deal on July 13 because the DEA informant refused to enter the house where they wanted to sell the cocaine, Modesitt said.

The men were arrested on suspicion of sale and possession of cocaine for sale as well as conspiracy, he said.

On June 15, the DEA seized six kilos of cocaine and arrested five Los Angeles dealers in Thousand Oaks, Modesitt said.

Two of the Los Angeles suppliers, believed to be mid-level dealers for a larger source, met a DEA informant in an Oxnard parking lot. A second car carrying three men followed but did not stop in the parking lot, instead circling the area looking for police cars.

When the men in the second car saw some units from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, they continued on to U.S. 101 where police pulled them over a short time later, Modesitt said.

A search of the car turned up six kilos of cocaine in the trunk. The five men were indicted in Federal Court in Los Angeles on charges of possessing cocaine with the intent to distribute it, and distribution of cocaine, Modesitt said.

However, Modesitt said more such deliveries might be making their way into Ventura County if it were not for the shortage of wholesale supplies. In addition, he said the purity of the kilos is down from about 80% to 40% as suppliers cut it with substitutes to make the smaller amounts go further.

“They’re sometimes diluting it and making more out of a limited supply,” Modesitt said.

Norm Wade, the chief toxicologist for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, said that even small amounts of cocaine recently seized have dropped in purity.

“I can tell by the tests I’m doing that the cocaine is less potent,” he said.

Dealers at the next level in the retail chain are handling the wholesale shortage in different ways, said Sgt. Gary Pentis of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Some dealers are hiking prices while others are selling a less pure product, the agents said. Several dealers have switched from selling cocaine to dealing methamphetamine.

In the Thousand Oaks area, dealers are charging higher prices for one-sixteenth of an ounce. The price for one-sixteenth--a commonly sold quantity--has risen from about $70 to $90, Pentis said.

In Oxnard, the Sheriff’s Department is seeing dealers charge the same price but cut the cocaine more to make it go further, Pentis said.

However, there is still a lot of cocaine on the streets, Pentis said. Dealers might be having a harder time getting their supplies to sell to users, but they are still getting the supplies, he said.

“The dealer might have to go to three people instead of one to get a supply,” Pentis said. “But the coke’s still out on the streets.”

Sgt. Steve Bowman of the Ventura Police Department agreed, saying that detectives have not seen a decrease in the amount of cocaine on Ventura streets.

However, he said, the price has been rising. On the street, an eighth of an ounce was selling for between $120 and $140. Now, the price has climbed to between $180 and $200 for an eighth, he said.

Bowman and other detectives said cocaine dealers frustrated by the shortages in the county are switching to selling methamphetamine.

Methamphetamine can be made by anyone “with basic high school chemistry and a good recipe,” Bowman said.

“If you already have a customer base, you can supply the methamphetamine product and you don’t have to rely on South America,” Bowman said. “You can cut out the middle man: It’s the American way.”

Methamphetamine gives the user a stimulant effect similar to cocaine, said Lt. Anderson of the Sheriff’s Department.

In addition, a methamphetamine high can last between four and 24 hours. Cocaine, in contrast, gives the user a euphoric 15 to 45 minutes but wears off almost completely in two hours.

“If cocaine’s availability has waned, it looks like methamphetamine is gaining popularity,” Anderson said.