Drug busts already adding up for Highway Patrol

This week’s traffic stop that netted 75 pounds of pot on I-80 is just the latest in what looks like another record-breaking year. Lieutenant Robert Hansen with the Iowa State Patrol says the first 20 days of January show a steep increase over drug-bust totals in the year 2002. Hansen says a trooper’s recovering after he tried to stop a car over the weekend and it hit him while the driver was trying to flee in what deputies call a “rolling meth lab” they finally busted near Spencer. Hansen says there have been two cocaine seizures totaling 75 pounds, two pounds of meth in a northern-Iowa bust and totals across the state have been worth five to six million dollars already. The five to six million so far in 2003 follows a record 30-million seized last year which in turn eclipsed the previous year total of six-point-five million. Hansen says they’ve increased training to let troopers know what’s going on out there, how they’re likely to hide drugs and what kind of vehicles are being used and how to listen for clues when talking with a driver during a stop.