Mexican drugs cartels have expanded all the way north and are targeting America’s ‘last best place’ by preying on vulnerable Native American communities in Montana.
A recent report showed Montana to be the second most ‘addicted’ state with 18.2 percent of the state’s population using illicit drugs in 2021 – a figure that has only been rising as time goes on.
Drug cartels from Mexico are drawn to the state of Montana because of how much money they can squeeze out of residents.
Fentanyl pills, for example, can be sold for 20 times the price in Montana than other areas – like urban centers closer to the border. The pills can be made for less than 25 cents in Mexico and sell for $3 to $5 in urban cities, but could rake in up to $100 in parts of Montana.
The drug problem has specifically plagued Montana’s Indian reservations – where traffickers trap Native Americans in a cycle of addiction and debt.
Mexican drugs cartels have expanded all the way North and are targeting America’s ‘last best place’ by preying on vulnerable Native American communities in Montana
A recent report showed Montana to be the second most ‘addicted’ state with 18.2 percent of the state’s population using illicit drugs in 2021 – a figure that has only been rising as time goes on
Cartels have pushed aggressively into the notoriously beautiful state – even forming relationships with Indigenous women to gain access to communities and getting locals hooked on drugs.
Tribal leaders say that crimes and overdoses are surging in their communities, and the cartels ‘know who to choose,’ according to Stephanie Iron Shooter, the American Indian health director for the Montana Department of Health and Human Services.
‘Just like any other prey-predator situation – that’s how it is.’
Indian reservations are optimal targets for drug organizations because they have high drug addiction rates and low numbers of law enforcement.
Montana’s opioid overdose death rate 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.
Traffickers have manipulated Native Americans into becoming dealers themselves by giving them an initial supply of drugs to sell, and then turning them into addicts and indebting them to the cartels, NBC reported.
In March 2020, a former Mexican police officer working for the Sinaloa cartel attempted to smuggle enough meth to supply the entire town of Townsend, Montana, with meth for multiple days.
The mule, Ricardo Ramos Medina, made it into the US and picked up a grocery sack containing two pounds of pure methamphetamine which he planned to drive all the way from San Diego to Montana.
Medina was pulled over by state and federal officers and arrested – leading to the takedown of an entire drug 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.
Drug cartels from Mexico are drawn to the state of Montana because of how much money they can squeeze out of residents
Fentanyl pills, for example, can be sold for 20 times the price in Montana than other areas – like urban centers closer to the border
The drug problem has specifically plagued Montana’s Indian reservations – where traffickers trap Native Americans in a cycle of addiction and debt
Ricardo Ramod Medina is being held in Missoula on charges of trafficking a large quantity of meth and 1,000 pills from Mexico into Butte, as Montana buckles under the strain of the drug crisis
The rise of fentanyl in the U.S. has hugely affected Montana, with the state seizing 350,000 dosage units of fentanyl compared to in 2022 when the number was half that.
‘Right now it’s as if fentanyl is raining on our reservation,’ said Marvin Weatherwax, Jr., who serves on the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and represents the 15th district in the Montana House of Representatives.
People are surprised that drug epidemic surging from Mexican cartels has spread all the way to Montana, according to Jesse Laslovich, the U.S. attorney for Montana, who has been overseeing the investigations.
‘You’re as far north as you can get in the United States, and yet we have the cartel here,’ she said.
Despite often being referred to as ‘the last best place’ in America, Montana has been run down by the drug industry.
Jami Rak, a mom from Billings, told NewsNation last year that her son Keaton was almost killed by a fentanyl overdose, one of many Montana-residents whose lives are now under threat from the influx of powerful synthetic opioids.
Near the state’s Cheyenne reservation, abandoned homes formerly used as trap houses clutter the once-beautiful rural landscape and gas stations leading in and out of the community are the sites of drug deals.
Cartels related to Medina’s drug-trafficking bust took over at least two properties on the reservation to distribute meth to nearby communities.
Ranita R. Redfield and Zachary D. Bacon were roped into the cartel as members of the community.
Refield’s lawyer described how her vulnerable client was preyed on after enduring a period of family turmoil and heartbreak.
‘Choosing to distance herself from acquaintances who knew her from the past and had no place to live, she often stayed with the cartel,’ the lawyer, Jessica Polan Wright, wrote.
Jami Rak, pictured, says her son Keaton almost died of a fentanyl overdose. She moved to Billings in Montana because the area has such a safe reputation – but was confronted with a terrifyingly different reality
The Blackfleet tribe’s reservation in Montana has been badly-affected by the influx of illegal drugs
The rise of fentanyl in the U.S. has hugely affected Montana, with the state seizing 350,000 dosage unites of fentanyl compared to in 2022 when the number was half that
Tribal leaders say that crimes and overdoses are surging in their communities, and the cartels ‘know who to choose’ (pictured: 19 firearms seized by federal agents from Montana drugs busts)
‘Trapped in the vicious cycle of addiction and under the cartel’s control, Ranita became a pawn in their operations.’
She was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to dealing meth.
Bacon was roped in after he began dating the daughter of one of the Native American drug dealers.
‘The cartel extracted tens of thousands of dollars in cash, guns and vehicles from the Crow Reservation,’ Bacon’s lawyer Matthew Claus said.
‘Money and guns flowed out of state and out of the country and then the cartel left. In their wake, they left addicted, strung out, impoverished tribal members facing prosecutions and lengthy prison sentences, like Zach Bacon,’ Claus added.
Another reservation in Montana, the Blackfeet Reservation, saw 17 people suffer fentanyl overdoses in just one week.
‘We’re lacking a lot of resources to deal with a crisis that even our facility is not equipped to handle,’ said Durand Tyland Bear Medicine, the director of Crystal Creek Lodge Treatment Center.
Reservations in the southeastern part of Montana are also being rocked by the widespread drug epidemic – but they are primarily victims to methamphetamine usage.