DRUG BUSTS RISE AT BORDERS

Bolstered security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks yields more arrests.

Heightened security after the Sept. 11 attacks has had a major side effect:
Seizures of illegal drugs along the nation's borders and at its ports of
entry increased substantially in October and November over the
corresponding period a year ago, law enforcement authorities say.

The greatest increase, 326 percent, was in seizures from commercial traffic
along the Canadian border. But the overall figure was also large: The
amount of drugs seized from commercial traffic - that is, from trucks,
ships and planes - at all borders and ports was up 66 percent, the Customs
Service says.

Experts have no clear evidence that the increased seizures have created a
shortage of drugs on the street or raised their price there.

And although Afghanistan has been the producer of about 75 percent of the
world's heroin, most of it going to Western Europe, it is far too early to
determine what effect the war against the Taliban or its outcome will have
on drug supply.

But Customs Service Commissioner Robert C. Bonner, said, "There has been a
definite unintended consequence of the effort against terror: We are doing
a better job of keeping illegal drugs out of the United States."

Seizures initially dropped after Sept. 11 as drug traffickers slowed
shipments, apparently to gauge what would happen as customs inspectors went
on highest alert. The decline was very short-lived, however. The total
amount of drugs seized by the Customs Service at borders and ports, from
commercial traffic and noncommercial alike, jumped 30 percent in October
from the same month last year.

At the same time, heightened anti-terrorism patrols forced the Coast Guard
to pull back most of the ships and planes it had been using for anti-drug
operations in the Caribbean and the Pacific and assign them to areas closer
to the coast, a step that brought a drop in its drug seizures.

From Sept. 11 to Nov. 30, the Coast Guard seized 10,600 pounds of cocaine,
for example, compared with 30,122 pounds in the same period a year ago, and
480 pounds of marijuana, compared with 7,500 pounds, a spokesman said.

"We recognize that there is a challenge for us in doing both homeland
security and drug patrols," said the spokesman, Capt. Mike Lapinski, "so
we've started to push the borders back out and interdict the seas again in
the drug transit areas. We're almost back to pre-9/11."

The Coast Guard has been able to do this by putting its own detachments on
Navy ships. In the last few weeks, Lapinski said, these joint patrols have
led to the seizure of two sizable shipments of drugs on vessels off the
Pacific coast of Central America.

In New York, seizures of narcotics and of drug money are both up, said
Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor.

Given tighter security at airports and increased scrutiny of money
laundering since Sept. 11, drug traffickers "haven't been able to move
money in bulk or do it by wire transfers as easily," Brennan said.

As a result, she said, "our money seizures in connection with drug
trafficking are really up," to $4.2 million for Sept. 11 to Dec. 10,
compared with $600,000 in the corresponding three months last year.

As for the drugs themselves, Brennan said she had initially believed that
heightened security would make traffickers reluctant to bring them into New
York. But "that hasn't been true," she said. From Sept. 11 to Dec. 10, her
office seized 1,679 pounds of cocaine, up from 1,082 pounds in the
corresponding period last year; 725 pounds of marijuana, compared with a
pound and a half; and 302,000 Ecstasy pills, compared with 1,011.

Law enforcement officials are uncertain whether the increase in seizures
means only that they are intercepting a larger proportion of the narcotics
being smuggled into the United States, or whether the traffickers are
themselves contributing to the trend by increasing the number or size of
their shipments as a way of overwhelming the tighter security.

"It could be either, or both," said Joe Keefe, chief of operations for the
Drug Enforcement Administration. "It's too early to tell."

Keefe said he had not yet seen any evidence that major drug producers in
Colombia had increased their production since Sept. 11. He also said he had
not heard of any significant shortages of drugs on the street, or of major
changes in prices. But because drug dealers often maintain large
stockpiles, it can take months for a drop in supply from abroad to be
reflected in higher street prices.

Two academic experts who study drug dealing and drug use agreed that street
prices had not changed. They are Rick Curtis, chairman of the anthropology
department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York, and Mike
Agar, a research scientist with Friends Research International, of Baltimore.

Agreement came as well from Gil Kerlikowske, the police chief in Seattle.
Kerlikowske said the steady prices in his city, at a time when tighter
security along the nearby Canadian border had resulted in increased
seizures of drugs, suggested to him that "estimates of what is coming into
the country may have been wrong and that far more drugs were coming in than
we were aware of."