More Funds Urged For Drug War

Gary Martin, Express-News Washington Bureau
San Antonio Express-News (TX)
Friday, March 30, 2001


WASHINGTON -- An FBI sting that resulted in the arrest of 10 San Antonio law officers on drug trafficking charges was cited in congressional testimony Thursday as progress in a decades-long drug war that is drawing public skepticism.

U.S.  and Texas law enforcement officials pleaded with Congress to increase funding in the fight against narcotics traffickers along the Southwest border.

Michael Scott with the Texas Department of Public Safety said federal funding is critical "in order for the criminal justice system to maintain a holding action" against the growing threat of Mexico-based cartels that ship 65 percent of the U.S.-consumed cocaine across the Southwest border.

"We may have declared war on an unconventional enemy that we cannot completely defeat.  However, we must not listen to the naysayers and the advocates for legalization," Scott said in testimony submitted to the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime.

"We must stay the course," said Scott, chief of the DPS Criminal Law Enforcement Division.

Scott cited last week's FBI arrest of San Antonio law officers on charges that they conspired to protect loads of cocaine through the South Texas city as evidence that the power of drug kingpins to corrupt law enforcement is moving north of the Rio Grande.

Those arrests were also used by Scott to illustrate the effectiveness of law enforcement in combating problems associated with drug trafficking.

Donnie Marshall, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, pointed to a cocaine shipment hidden in T-shirts that was seized in Falfurrias and the confiscation of unusually large "black tar" heroin loads in Del Rio and Laredo as evidence that Mexican drug cartels were stepping up their efforts to move contraband over the Southwest border.

"We are making a difference.  We will make a difference," Marshall told the congressional subcommittee.

But an increasing number of critics have questioned the effectiveness of a drug war that has been waged for three decades.  Skepticism has been heightened by the Oscar award-winning film "Traffic," which questions the impact of law enforcement efforts that cost more than $12 billion each year.

A report released Thursday by the National Research Council, "Informing America's Police on Illegal Drugs: What we don't know keeps hurting us," found "scant data" to determine the effectiveness of federal interdiction programs.

"It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether, and to what extent, it is having the desired result," said Charles Manski, a Northwestern University economics professor and chairman of the National Research Council committee that wrote the report.

The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep.  Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, and the ranking Democrat on the panel, Rep.  Robert Scott, D-Va., called the congressional oversight hearing to review anti-narcotics efforts along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

Scott and Rep.  Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said that while drug interdiction efforts were necessary, they sought more emphasis on education and rehabilitation programs.

"I certainly think comprehensive discussion on treatment has an equally prominent role to play," Lee said.

But Smith and law enforcement officers who testified before the committee focused attention on the local impact the drug war is having on Texas and other border states.

"An overwhelming amount of the drugs that destroy the lives of so many Americans begins its journey to the United States by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border," Smith said.

U.S.  District Judge Royal Ferguson Jr.  of Midland said the five federal judicial districts along the border -- including two in Texas and the others in New Mexico, Arizona and California -- handle 27 percent of all criminal cases filed in the United States.

Ferguson said the caseload in the Southwest border courts has increased 161 percent since 1994.

"Washington cannot increase the crackdown on illegal drugs and immigration along the Southwest border without more judges to allow these cases to be prosecuted," Ferguson said.

According to the U.S.  Customs Service, 293 million people, 89 million automobiles and 4.5 million trucks crossed the Southwest border from Mexico in fiscal year 2000, which ended Sept.  30.

The numbers of crossings have increased with relaxed trade laws with Mexico, said John Varrone, a Customs Service assistant commissioner.

"The windows of opportunity for would-be smugglers along the Southwest border are staggering," Varrone said.

Scott blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico for increased narcotics trafficking.

He said 75 percent of the commercial truck traffic entering the United States from Mexico comes through Texas border ports.  Of that, he said roughly 5 percent to 10 percent are subjected to search or inspection.

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