Crime | Mexico Mexico Nabs 'King of Heroin' 'Don Pepe' shipped 440 pounds to US every month, say cops By Newser Editors and Wire Services Posted Mar 25, 2010 4:23 PM CDT Copied Guarded by police officers, Jose Antonio Medina, aka Don Pepe, center, is presented to the press in Mexico City, Thursday, March 25, 2010. (AP Photo) Federal police have arrested Mexico's so-called "King of Heroin," a powerful drug trafficker allegedly responsible for running hundreds of pounds of heroin into Southern California each year, authorities said today. Jose Antonio Medina, nicknamed "Don Pepe," was arrested in the western state of Michoacan yesterday. Medina, 36, ran a complex smuggling operation that hauled 440 pounds of heroin each month across the Mexican border in Tijuana for La Familia drug cartel, police said. The White House National Drug Threat Assessment says that while heroin use is stable or decreasing in the US, the source of the drug has shifted in recent years from Colombia—where production and purity are declining—to Mexico, where powerful drug cartels are gaining a foothold in the lucrative market. Read These Next Online boo-bears go after the demo firm tearing White House apart. President Monroe's daughter wrote a desperate plea in 1839. 'Butt-breathing' could be the future for struggling patients. Plane windshield partially shatters mid-flight. There's a suspect. Report an error