In drug fight, a slippery slope: ‘If we’re not careful next year we’re California or Oregon’

The past four years have ushered in a bigger, harder era for drug dealers, traffickers and users in Cache County.

According to Sgt. Brooks Davis of the Cache/Rich Drug Task Force, the county has seen its largest-ever seizures of methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin since 2012.

Davis said up until that year, the county was finding only small quantities of methamphetamine and very little heroin. “Now,” he said, “it’s mainstream.”

In 2014, officers, accustomed to busts no more than a few ounces, intercepted 2.2 pounds of meth coming from California to Cache County. They have found similar increases with nearly every other drug — both narcotic and prescription.

A recent seizure of around 10 pounds of marijuana has increased Davis' concerns, not particularly because of the quantity found, but what officers discovered with the drug — a large Butane Hash Oil, or BHO, production facility.

“It was very commercial,” Davis said. “There were large quantities and large equipment. Most home labs create BHO by packing a turkey baster and blasting butane through the weed. These guys had steel cylinders about two feet high and one foot in diameter. They were using a whole different delivery system for the butane. They had very high-tech equipment.”

According to Davis, although marijuana extracts like BHO are not new, its prevalence and concentration is increasing at an alarming rate. He credits that rate to the accessibility of tutorials and equipment — all of which can be bought or found on the Internet — and the legalization of marijuana in states across the country.

Davis said he was grateful, albeit surprised, the Utah State Legislature didn’t pass any bills legalizing marijuana this year. He worries any steps toward medicinal legalization, however small, would be a slippery slope for the Beehive State.

“As humans we use more, or we go for bigger and better,” Davis said. “If we’re not careful next year we’re California or Oregon… That’s the slope I worry about us going down.”

Davis attributes consumption increases to legislation that did pass in a prior session. House Bill 348, which went into effect in October, reduces charges for possession of user amounts of certain drugs for the first couple of offenses. Davis said light punishments do not encourage rehabilitation and increases users’ likeliness to abuse drugs again.

“The stove is no longer hot,” he said.

Jacob Gordon, a criminal deputy attorney for Cache County, said his job is getting busier, too.

“It has gone up significantly in the last few years,” Gordon said of drug consumption in the county. “We are seeing more and more drug cases; most of my case load now is drug cases.”