DRUG CONVICTIONS INCREASE IS DUE TO FBI AND CUSTOMS, NOT THE DEA

The federal government is convicting more Americans on drug charges than at
any time in the nation's history.

According to figures compiled by Syracuse University researchers, 1998 saw
the highest volume of federal drug convictions ever: 21,571 people.

That represented a 16 percent increase since 1992, substantially higher than
the nation's population growth of 6 percent during the same time.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration, the nation's leading anti-drug
agency, isn't as responsible for the jump in prosecutions or convictions as
other agencies.

While the DEA's staff of special agents has grown to 4,515 in 1999, up from
4,001 in 1997, and its budget has increased under the Clinton
administration, its prosecution numbers have remained largely constant since
1992.

The FBI and U.S. Customs Service have substantially increased their own drug
investigations in the 1990s. The DEA is still the dominant anti-drug agency,
but the others are catching up.

Between 1992 and 1998, according to the Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse at Syracuse, N.Y., FBI drug prosecutions rose 50 percent, to
4,815 cases, and Customs cases rose more than 27 percent, to 6,156 cases.
During the same time, the DEA's rate rose 1 percent, to 14,488 cases.

Convictions in cases brought by the FBI and Customs also have taken off. The
DEA's total convictions have risen 5.2 percent since 1992, while the FBI's
have spiked by 69 percent and Customs by more than 75 percent.

The reason?

By federal mandate, both Customs and the FBI joined the drug war in the
early 1990s to supplement the DEA, which until then had been operating on
its own. The effort originally began in Miami, when Customs joined with the
DEA to battle the narcotics trade in South Florida. Since then, more task
forces have been formed across the country, with federal and state agencies
cooperating on cases.

Federal officials in Washington said many of the drug cases for which the
FBI or Customs receive credit as the lead agency are joint efforts also
involving the DEA, which may account for why the DEA's numbers have remained
constant.

In addition, some cases in which the DEA teams up with local agencies end up
prosecuted by county district attorneys instead of U.S. attorneys.

The drug most often targeted by federal authorities remains marijuana, which
accounted for 34 percent of convictions in 1998, according to Trac figures.

Powder cocaine came in second at 28 percent, followed by crack cocaine at 17
percent, methamphetamine at 11 percent and heroin at 8 percent.

The annual cost of the federal war on drugs, meanwhile, continues to climb.

In 1998 it was $16 billion, six times higher in real dollars than in 1981.