MARSHALL — The Mexican drug cartel has flooded southwest Minnesota and the rest of the state with so much methamphetamine that the amount of meth labs have dropped drastically, according to the commander of a local law enforcement drug task force.

“The reason for that, is the Mexican cartel has literally flooded our market with methamphetamine,” Jody Gladis told members of the Marshall Noon Rotary Club on Tuesday. He heads the Brown-Lyon- Redwood-Renville Drug Task Force.

“They have super labs in Mexico and they are shipping this stuff up here by the pounds. And I mean literally hundreds of pounds. So having a meth lab in our area, it doesn’t even pay. You can buy the dope cheaper than you can make it. Before, it wasn’t that way.”

Answering a question from one of the Rotary members in attendance about the cartel’s presence in southwest Minnesota, Gladis asked a question right back.

“How many of you actually believe we have cartel members living right here in Marshall?” he asked.

“They are here. They have their own people set up throughout the U.S. They are all over the place,” he said.

In introducing Gladis to the club, Marshall’s Director of Public Safety, Rob Yant, announced that Gladis is retiring from law enforcement in July.

Gladis called methamphetamine use in the state an epidemic. But he said his task force is dealing with an array of narcotics besides methamphetamine. The others he listed are cocaine, heroine, marijuana, prescription medications and synthetic drugs. He also said there is a rise in fentanyl and carfentanil.

“I’m sure you have seen this on the news, fentanyl is getting to be a huge thing where they lace the heroine with fentanyl,” Gladis said. “Carfentanil, if you are not aware of it, is an elephant tranquilizer. That’s what it is. And if you are wondering how much of that you need to ingest in order to overdose, take your salt shaker, shake it on the table, take one grain. You ingest that, you are going to overdose. So they are mixing this stuff into other drugs in order to make their high better and it’s cheaper. The cartels are looking to make money. They don’t care how many people that die because they know they will get more addicted.”

Gladis said methamphetamine is not a big problem with high school students. But he said his task force is seeing marijuana and prescription pills.

“Scripts are a huge thing. If you don’t lock your prescriptions up, you should. Don’t tell people where your prescriptions are at. If you don’t think a family member will steal from you, you are sadly mistaken,” he said. “A perfect example, a girl had a dying grandmother. She was dying and she had a fentanyl patch. The granddaughter peeled the patch off her grandmother so she could get her fix. How desperate was she? If you get hooked on prescription medication, you will do anything to get it — anything. I have seen it a million times.”

Gladis took issue of a push to change sentencing guidelines for those convicted with drug charges.

“They are trying to decriminalize narcotics. They are basically saying that narcotics are a nonviolent offense. Where do you think your burglaries, arm robberies, thefts, assaults, homicides all come from?” he asked. “They just think treatment is going to help them. I can tell you over my 31-year career, if you don’t want treatment, it’s not going to do any good. If somebody doesn’t want to do it, they are going to use it as an excuse so they don’t have to go to jail and we are going to deal with them again in less than a week.”