OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – A man is behind bars after being arrested for allegedly having thousands of dollars in cash and ketamine in his car. It’s a drug that the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics says they’ve seen more of in recent years.

“Thankfully, we were able to get those drugs off the streets before they got into the hands of somebody who it could have killed,” said Msgt. Gary Knight with the Oklahoma City Police Department.

A traffic stop revealed hallucinogenic drugs in northwest Oklahoma City Tuesday. Knight said they got a call about a vehicle swerving all over the road and an officer in the area pulled over 39-year-old Gang Wu.

“They spoke with the driver, obtained consent to search the driver,” he said. “As they were frisking him, they came across a large sum of cash in one of his pockets, nearly $10,000.”

Of bigger concern though, was the ketamine he was carrying.

“That’s an illegal drug,” Knight said. “You must have a prescription to have that.”

“Ketamine is a very powerful and popular club drug globally,” Mark Woodward with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said.

Woodward said the ketamine is usually mass produced in China and smuggled onto the black market. Since the pandemic, he said they’ve seen more of it in Oklahoma.

“We have intercepted a lot of Ketamine that has come from China being sourced to specifically marijuana farms in Oklahoma that are run by the Chinese or are being sold to workers on these farms,” he said.

Woodward added that criminal organizations with ties to China are moving to the sooner state. He said they commit what he called collateral crimes. They’ve seen prostitution and gambling rings, illegal marijuana farms, and trafficking ketamine.

“We’ve seen it smuggled in cardboard containers in the lining of cardboard boxes to look like legitimate shipments coming in from China on cargo containers,” he said. “Some of it’s coming across the southern border by the cartels.”