HIGH SEASON FOR DOPE SMUGGLERS

Border Patrol Snags Over A Ton A Day

Falfurrias, Texas -- As a steady stream of traffic pulled through the U.S.
Border Patrol checkpoint here, Agent Johnny did not look twice at the
gravel trucks, the 18- wheelers or even the powder-blue Cadillac. But he
knew instantly that the green Dodge pickup was carrying more than firewood.

Johnny, a dope-sniffing Belgian Malinois dog, started barking like mad,
pawing and pressing his snout against the driver's door. When agents got
into the truck and pulled out the seat, there it was: a half-pound or so of
marijuana, bundled in plastic, in a cab doused with air freshener to hide
the smell.

It is dope time again in the southland. Every year from October to January,
marijuana smuggling into the United States skyrockets as farmers from
Mexico to Colombia rush to get their harvest to market.

"A lot of these guys are trying to buy Christmas presents, so they want to
sell what they have, then get home to spend time with their families," said
Will Glaspy, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Since Oct. 1, Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Service agents working in the
southernmost tip of Texas, from Laredo to Brownsville on the Gulf of
Mexico, have seized more than 93 tons of marijuana, with an estimated
street value exceeding $150 million.

That haul, which officials said marks a slight increase over last year's,
represents an average of more than a ton a day. It floods in stashed behind
truck seats, mixed in with loads of tomatoes, stuffed into hollowed-out
floor beams of flat-bed trucks and, in one case, shoved underneath a
disabled grandmother sitting in the front seat of a car.

Other drugs -- including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine -- are less
bulky and easier to conceal. Agents at this checkpoint, 60 miles north of
the border crossing at McAllen, Texas, found 12,000 ecstasy tablets hidden
in the clothing of a bus passenger on Sunday.

Smuggling of these potent drugs usually grabs headlines. But here, along
one of the busiest drug corridors in North America, officials say smugglers
are bringing in staggering amounts of marijuana from Mexico, taking chances
with bigger, heftier loads because economics are on their side.

U.S. teenagers use marijuana more than any other drug, according to the
federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That
agency's 2001 Household Survey of drug use found that nearly 20 percent of
youths ages 12 to 17 reported using marijuana at least once. That compared
with about 3 percent who reported using ecstasy and just over 2 percent who
reported using cocaine.

Glaspy, the DEA spokesman, said marijuana prices vary widely by quality and
by where it is sold, so it is impossible to estimate the total value of
U.S. sales. But he said marijuana smokers are the front-line consumers in a
multibillion-dollar industry.

The front door of that business is at a highway checkpoint on Route 281, a
corridor of asphalt through endless fields of board-flat scrublands.
Officials said this tip of southern Texas is popular with smugglers because
it is the shortest route to the United States from fields in southern
Mexico and South America. The major border crossings from Ciudad Juarez
into El Paso, Texas, or Tijuana into San Diego, are farther north, adding
distance and danger of being caught to each trip, the officials said.

Route 281 is the main route from McAllen north to San Antonio, where major
highways branch out toward huge markets in Houston, Austin, Dallas and
beyond. Every few miles, police can be seen searching cars. And the Border
Patrol keeps a sky-watch unit along the roadside, a sort of cherry picker
from which agents with infrared sensing devices look out over the brush for
drug-smugglers and illegal immigrants.

In the last few miles leading up to the Border Patrol checkpoint, signs
advertising shotgun shells and watermelons are replaced by those for
Castaqedas Bail Bonds and Mireles Bail Bonds.

Steve Rose, the Border Patrol agent in charge of the checkpoint just south
of Falfurrias, said an average of 31,000 cars and trucks a day pass
through. Agents with trained dogs check each vehicle, looking for smuggled
drugs or people. He said they discover someone trying to smuggle drugs as
many as 10 times a day, especially in this busy time of the year.

"You can't stop everything," Rose said. "But I haven't been here yet in a
24-hour period where we haven't caught something."