The Christian Science Monitor reports on the high amount of illicit drug seizures that is taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border this fiscal year.

According to figures from the DEA, law enforcement officials in Arizona alone has already seized over a million pounds of marijuana that was being transported through the Arizona-Mexico border.

According to US Customs and Border Protection figures, which include only amounts that CBP agents seize, 1.7 million pounds of marijuana were seized along the US border with Mexico so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. A little more than half that amount was seized in Arizona. The previous record, for all of fiscal 2006, was about 1.3 million pounds.

DEA figures, which include drugs that all law-enforcement agencies working in the state take in, are even higher. At the end of August, with one month left in the fiscal year, federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies in Arizona had already confiscated 1.1 million pounds of marijuana coming across the Mexico border. In all of fiscal 2006, officers intercepted 885,573 pounds of marijuana crossing the Mexico-Arizona border.

Marijuana is the most-seized drug on the border, followed by cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, according to the article.

More information at our Global Drug Trade page.