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 Boise-area 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, 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.

Read the full story at idahostatesman.com.