THE ULTIMATE CROP

SAN DIEGO. It's easy to think of San Diego as a sports dreamland. On
the ride from Yuma I passed huge sand dunes where dune buggies were
cavorting; a mountain peak circled by strangely out-of-scale hawks
that turned out to be hang gliders and para-sails; a gigantic skating
park; and finally San Diego bay itself, stately with sails, busy with
small fishing boats. If you want to be active and outdoors, this city
has got to be one of the great places in America to live.

But a dark shadow looms over San Diego and reaches into every corner
of America. It is from Tijuana and drugs. In the first two months of
the year, according to news reports, 70 people have been murdered in
Tijuana, presumed victims in drug turf battles.

Television news is interrupted on the day of my arrival by an
announcement that Tijuana Chief of Police Alfredo de la Torre Marquez
was shot to death on his way to work. Ambushed by assassins with
automatic weapons, his vehicle was hit by at least 100 shots.
Fifty-three bullets were found in his body.

Murder isn't unique to Tijuana. It is increasing along the entire
border.

In Juarez, Mayor Gustavo Elizondo has successfully petitioned the
government of Mexico to rename the major drug cartels so that they are
now named after their top dogs rather than the city in which they
operate. Overnight, the "Juarez Cartel," disappears from public reporting.

Not surprisingly, the mayor was concerned with the image of his city
after last Novembers highly publicized search for mass graves. While
100 to 300 bodies were sought, "only" 9 were found. Since 1993 over
200 people have disappeared in Juarez.

Why is this happening?

Drugs. Only the incredible money in illegal drugs can explain the
rising level of violence along the border.

Skeptical?

Then consider this. Just west of Del Rio, after riding over the
Amistad Reservoir Bridge, a single Border Patrol agent, Alex Lopez,
stopped me. Mr. Lopez is part of a Special Response Team in the area.
Officer Lopez was alone in a region that resembles the surface of the
moon.

I commented that he had a tough job.

"Not so bad." He answered. "It gets exciting sometimes."

I asked how it was exciting.

"This is a major area for drug smuggling. A lot of stuff comes through
here and we're here to stop it."

I asked how it came through.

"Oh, someone will swim the river with a raft. They'll haul bags of
marijuana or cocaine to a spot near the highway. And then, by
pre-arrangement, someone will come along the road and pick it up. It's
a huge area to patrol. Catching them is difficult," he said.

Very difficult. You can understand by looking at a map. The
U.S./Mexico border is 2,000 miles long. Large areas of Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona--- like the area between Del Rio and Langtry---
are virtually devoid of population. It is easy to cross the river and
meet waiting transportation. It's easy to cross the border for waiting
transportation. And if you want to operate Big Time, you've got
thousands of square miles of empty land in Texas to scrape out a dirt
airstrip.

Now consider the economics of heroin in the Sierra Madre. According to
measurements derived from Edwin Bustillos and Alan Weisman in "The
Late Great Mexican Border" (Cinco Puntos Press, paperback), an acre of
land can support about 44,000 poppy bulbs. It takes about 10 poppy
bulbs to produce a gram of opium gum and each bulb can be milked 3 to
10 times. This means an acre can produce at least 13,200 grams of
opium gum and that, in turn will refine down about 1,320 grams of pure
heroin that is valued at $80 to $500 a gram in the United States.

So do the math.

Assuming minimum productivity and minimum price, an acre of dirt in
the Sierra Madre can produce a heroin crop worth $105,600. At higher
levels of productivity (10 milkings) and higher price levels ($500 a
gram) the heroin from the same acre could have a street value of
$2,200,000. That's a lot more than can be earned from raising cattle,
hunting exotic game, farming pecan groves, citrus groves--- or even
renting RV spaces. What we're talking about here is the Ultimate Crop,
the crop that displaces (or corrupts) everything.

While most of the border area struggles to leapfrog from a subsistence
agricultural and mining economy to an industrial economy--- one where
manufactured homes displace farmland in McAllen and RVs replace orange
groves in Yuma--- the crop that beats industrialization cold is
heroin. It is an irresistible force.

Our "war on drugs" is a Vietnam: whatever we spend to complete the Tortilla
Curtain and turn the entire 2,000 mile border into an American version of
the Great Wall of China, it will not be enough to stop the movement of
drugs across the border or to reduce the carnage on both sides.

What to do?

Something radical: eliminate the profit in illegal drug
traffic.

De-criminalize the production, distribution, and use of drugs.
Disembowel criminal levels of profitability. Have normal levels of
profitability by conventional companies that produce and distribute
high quality, low cost drugs. Use taxes on drugs to support drug
treatment programs for people who want to recover. Have the cahones,
as a nation, to realize that we are awash in substance abuse and that
the legality/illegality of substances ranging from legal alcohol and
prescription tranquilizers to illegal cocaine and heroin are
transitory social conventions that allow criminals to make fortunes,
cost the lives of substance abusers, and inflict agony on their loved
ones.

Do that and we can enjoy a magnificent decline in the domestic crime
rate. We can build treatment centers instead of prisons. We might even
restore millions of Americans who live in the shadow world of drugs.

I did not think this way when I left Dallas and headed for Brownsville
on February 5th. I was convinced it was the only solution by the time
I left San Diego.