AT 30, DRUG AGENCY STILL DOGS DEALERS

JACKSON - As the bus entered the Greyhound station, the scene outside made
one passenger's toes curl. Drug dogs waited at the bus's exit.

"When he saw us and the dogs, he freaked out," said Marshall Pack, the lead
agent on a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics unit.

Agents questioned the man and he gave himself up. He was carrying three
grams of heroin - in his right shoe.

The bus station drug bust was a birthday-week return to the past for
Mississippi's drug-fighting agency. Heroin was most popular in the 1970s,
when the bureau was just beginning operations, Ron Pitts, deputy director
of the MBN, said.

At a 30th-anniversary gathering last week, past directors praised the
integrity of the bureau's agents and the strength of their training.
Director Don Strange talked about new technology the bureau will use.

Thirty years ago, agents were strictly undercover: they wore their hair
long and rode motorcycles just to buy dope. Now, agents with cell phones
and laptops conduct complicated drug stings and occasionally call in the
dogs to screen bus passengers and pore over mail packages.

Changing times have brought changing drug patterns, too. In the mid-1980s
it was powdered cocaine. Then crack cocaine overtook the market. The latest
hot drug has been methamphetamine, Pitts said. The constant has always been
marijuana.

With Strange, a former DEA director of intelligence, at the helm, the
bureau's focus has changed.

There was a time when agents went after street-level dealers. High arrest
numbers kept the public happy, but the arrests crowded jails with a
rotating population of young offenders, Pitts said. Now the agency goes
after mid-to upper-level dealers, to lower supply.

"We can fill the jails every day but that doesn't mean law enforcement is
effective," Pitts said. "If we can stop the flow in and out of the state,
then we're being effective."

Take out drug sources, reduce supply, curb addiction, lower petty crime
that funds drug buying, Pitts said. The result is less crime and happier,
safer citizens, he said.

George Cazenavette, special agent in charge of the DEA New Orleans field
division, said Mississippi benefits from Strange's international
perspective from his DEA experience.

"He's got a vision and a focus I haven't seen before," Cazenavette said.
"I'd say from what I see taking place they're going to be one of the
premier narcotics agencies in my area at the local level."

Strange has introduced a five-year plan, unique at the state level, with
six main goals. Among them: Reduce drug availability, reduce interstate
trafficking and strengthen information sharing and cooperation among agencies.

In coming years, agents expect rising use of OxyContin, the prescription
drug recently in headlines for its illegal use.

The agency will battle an increasingly educated population, Pitts said.
Enforcement is hurt by television as true-to-life shows give away valuable
techniques.

"It's ridiculous how much it stifles our ability," Pitts said. "Most of the
techniques we employ you see in the movies and most of it is pretty dang
accurate."

As passengers got off their buses in downtown Jackson last week, they might
have felt they were starring in a police drama, with dogs scrambling over
their luggage and Pack's six-man team questioning passengers.

Agents didn't even use the dogs to ID their drug carrier. Instead they
observed some of the 80 characteristics, mostly nervous behavior, that
agents use to spot those with drugs.

"Some people are cool and walk right past us and others are so nervous
they're about to throw up," said agent Shannon Coghlan.

"With a kilo of cocaine strapped to you, you're already nervous. When you
see us out there it just gets worse," she said.