Inside a Midtown night club HPD undercover narcotics officers find bags of cocaine, crystal meth and a customer allegedly trying to swallow another drug.

The war against drugs in Houston is heating up.

It’s a war some believe we are losing, but a war we can’t afford to lose said Captain Steve Smith with HPD Narcotics. “As long as we are fighting it then we are winning. And as long as you adapt to that and understand that then you will never think that law enforcement is losing the battle.”

Located hours from the border, officials say Houston has become a distribution hub for other parts of the country.

Two weeks ago 21,000 pounds of marijuana was found inside an 18-wheeler. It was worth $48,000.

Police said it was headed for Chicago, New York and Atlanta.

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But seizing illegal drugs is only part of the battle.

Taking the profit out of drug dealing is another.

Police said there is a lot of money involved.

Take for instance the recent arrest of a man who was boarding a passenger bus.

He was carrying a new air compressor and was picked up after acting suspicious.

Inside the part they found about $185,000 in tightly rolled up bills.

It is money that police say was headed back to Mexico to pay for a drug shipment.

Drugs like the nearly $3 million of pure cocaine that officers discovered in the attic of one Clear Lake area home.

Police said a gang known as the Zetas imported nearly 30 kilos of cocaine from the Mexican drug cartel.

They say the drug supply seems never ending and so does the danger.

“There’s a moment there that the suspects or the people you have been investigating. They are not sure if you are the police or not and that’s the most dangerous situation is at the time of the arrest. The time that you kick that door in a forcible entry to run a search warrant is when they wonder if they are being ripped off by home invasion narcotic traffickers or if they are the police,” said HPD Captain Steve Smith.

Police say seizures of drugs and guns go hand in hand.

The question is can police gain the upper hand in this never ending fight?

“But as we said it is a very lucrative promising business so the suspects and the narcotics traffickers, the cartels, they are always ahead of us,” said Capt. Smith.

But the men and women inside HPD’s narcotics division are not giving up.

They say they’ll do what it takes because they know failure isn’t an option.