It may be temporary, but it is still a surprise: Cocaine has unseated methamphetamine as the most prevalent hard drug in Boise, police say.

Other Treasure Valley law enforcement officers note a similar trend, though they say meth has already started to come back. Meth remains Idaho's No. 1 drug problem.

Investigators credit meth's lost ground to coordinated enforcement efforts in the Treasure Valley, more crackdowns in Mexico and a 2-year-old Idaho law that quashed meth labs by clamping down on the cold remedies used to make the drug.

Last summer, an interagency operation pounced on Treasure Valley meth trafficking, netting 51 suspects and 11 pounds of crystal meth by disrupting a pipeline from Mexico, investigators said.

Even more damaging were major lab busts in Mexico and U.S. seizure of key meth ingredients en route to labs south of the border, Idaho State Police Detective Jack Catlin said.

And when meth gets scarce, it gets heavily diluted, cut with filler materials such as MSM horse-feed supplement, said Keith Weis, Southwest Idaho's resident agent in charge for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"Prices went really high, and the quality was really low," Weis said. "So cocaine kind of moved in. It started spiking in the fall."

PRICES RISE AND FALL WITH SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Soaring meth prices have helped fuel the rising popularity of cocaine, which costs about half as much per ounce, investigators say. Coke use in the area tripled last year, the DEA reports.

Meth prices are running about $18,000 per pound, said Ada County sheriff's Detective Javi Bustos, who works with the local DEA task force. That's about twice as much as cocaine.

But investigators also say most meth users' addictions are so strong that they aren't deterred by high prices or diverted to another drug. Meth and coke are both stimulants, but they aren't interchangeable, they say.

Meth supplies are rising again in the Treasure Valley, and Bustos said prices have already declined from last year's all-time highs of $19,000 to $20,000 a pound.

In Boise, police seized more than four times as much coke as meth in 2007 - 2,790 grams compared with 629 grams. And that ratio holds true today, said Sgt. Mike Harrington, supervisor of BANDIT, the Boise Area Narcotic and Drug Interdiction Task Force.

"For the last couple of years, the prominent drug we've been purchasing around here is cocaine," said Harrington, referring to undercover operations in which officers buy drugs to build cases against dealers. "We haven't seen the quantity of meth that we used to."

Narcotics officers for Nampa police and the Ada County Sheriff's Office saw a similar trend late last year and early this year, but they say meth is now reclaiming its market supremacy. The drug's intense, physically ravaging addictiveness ensures a loyal customer base, they say.

Nampa's undercover officers are encountering about 70 percent meth to 30 percent coke, narcotics unit Sgt. Joe Huff said. But for a five- or six-month period late last year and early this year, the ratio was more like 60 percent coke to 40 percent meth, he said.

This past April, an interagency operation dubbed White Wolf helped dampen cocaine trafficking with coordinated busts at 10 Canyon County homes, he said.

"It's just like the stock market: supply and demand," Huff said.

Sheriff's Chief Deputy Gary Deulen said that in rural Canyon County "coke has picked up, but we're still working the same number of crank cases." However, he said, "major-quantity" busts of meth (aka crank) are more scarce - a trend also noted in Nampa.

Large quantities of meth have recently become more available throughout Southwest Idaho, Catlin said, and meth is the dominant hard drug in the region.

But he added, "cocaine has come back, and it's still here."

LAW FOILS HOME-GROWN METH COOKS

A big factor in Boise's meth-coke reversal came via the 2006 Idaho Legislature, Harrington said.

Lawmakers passed a bill restricting the sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, keeping meth "cooks" from buying mass quantities of cold pills used to concoct the drug.

The number of Boise meth labs plummeted, he said.

Boise police have made one meth-lab bust this year, compared to nearly 30 a year in years past.

Most meth now comes to the Treasure Valley from Mexico to Canyon County, investigators said. The same pipeline brings in South American cocaine and other drugs, Weis said.

Meth still reigns in Ada County Drug Court, said coordinator Marreen Baker Burton, who drug-tests about 200 people numerous times per month.

"For us to get a positive (test result) for cocaine is very rare," she said.

About 72 percent of the cases that go through drug court stem from charges of meth or meth-related crimes, she said.

METH MORE LINKED TO CRIME

Cocaine tends to be less problematic than meth from a law-enforcement perspective, Caldwell Police Chief Chris Allgood said.

"Decreased meth tends to mean decreased violent crime," he said. "Coke doesn't seem to have the same link to violence."

Meth highs are stronger, longer and more intense, Weis said, and "people get very desperate to sustain that high."

Property crimes such as burglary are commonly linked to meth because addicts need money to buy the high-priced drug, Bustos said.

"The addictiveness is overwhelming," he said.

"People just can't seem to get off meth," agreed Boise's Harrington.

Cocaine, which is derived from coca leaves, is not as "dirty" a drug as meth, a synthetic compound rife with chemicals, he said.

Drug and alcohol counselor Roberto Olvera, who works for Community Services Counseling in Boise, said most of his clients are struggling with meth or alcohol addiction, but he has seen a slight increase in the number of cocaine addicts.

He noted that a trend in coke trafficking and use would not immediately be felt in the ranks of drug counselors, because 99 percent of the agency's clients are court-supervised and cases tend to take a while to wend through the courts.

DRUG TRADE IS RESILIENT

"The customer base is still mostly meth," Weis said.

The drug trade is extremely resilient, said investigators, who have been staying as busy or busier than in past years.

Cooperation between Valley law enforcement agencies is at an all-time high and having a "pretty good impact," Weis said.

But for every dealer taken down, another springs up.

Bustos recalls the Operation Mountain Lion meth busts of July 2007, which "netted a whole group of dealers who had been around for a long time."

"Four days later, I got a call from a guy saying, 'I'm here to take over,' " Bustos said.

Kristin Rodine: 377-6447