JAMAICA STRUGGLES WITH COCAINE

YALLAHS, Jamaica--Gordon, a villager whose family has been fishing the
waters off Jamaica's southeastern coast for generations, needed a little
extra cash. So one day last year, another fisherman introduced him to a
local cocaine smuggler.

Gordon became a bit player in a growth industry. In his 18 -foot-long boat,
he makes regular pickups at prearranged spots a few miles offshore.
Occasionally he's called at the last minute to pluck floating packets from
the sea when they are jettisoned by traffickers spotted by U.S. and Jamaican
coast guard patrols.

It is dangerous work -but very tempting in a land where times are hard and
hopes are scant.

"Fishing can't send my kids to school. Fishing can't buy a new motor for my
boat," said Gordon, who only gave his first name.

Smuggling cocaine more than doubled his income, Gordon said, sipping rum at
a seaside bar and ruminating upon the $15,000, 45 -horsepower Yamaha engine
that now graces his boat.

Gordon, 38, refused to give his last name for fear of the law, but he spoke
openly about his activities. While locals refused to discuss Gordon
specifically, they confirmed that cocaine smuggling by fishermen is
widespread.

"I hear it happens all up and down the coast," said Reddy Gilson, 32. "This
kind of thing is hard to keep secret. One man shows up with money, new
shoes, new clothes, more money than he had before, and everyone knows where
he got it from."

John Tom, 24, who steams fish on the roadside, said: "We all know what's
going on. You can't call the police and tell them what you know. If they see
you talking to a police officer they'll come and ... kill you and your
family." Jean-Luc Lemahieu, manager of the Barbados-based U.N. program to
fight drugs in the Caribbean, said the phenomenon is rather new in Jamaica.

"Up to two or three years ago, the impression was that Jamaica's major
problem was marijuana," he said. Colombian traffickers began routing more
shipments through Jamaica -as well as Haiti -as U.S. authorities clamped
down on smuggling through their Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico and as
enforcement improved in the Dominican Republic, Lemahieu said.

Located about halfway between Colombia and Florida and offering a
well-established network of gangs as allies, Jamaica is an attractive
alternate transit point.

"Where we used to see maybe one boatload of cocaine a week, we're now seeing
three to four boatloads of cocaine, each weighing" 800 to 1,800 pounds, said
Beres Spence, head of Jamaica's police narcotics division. "Traffickers can
access every inch of our shoreline, but it would be impossible for us to
cover every inch."

Spence and foreign analysts estimate that, at most, a fifth of the cocaine
passing through Jamaica is intercepted. A record 5,500 pounds was seized
last year, more than double the amount of the year before. While the
increase might reflect better detection, it also suggests a rise in
trafficking.

Most of the cocaine is shipped on slim vessels outfitted with powerful
engines that can travel from the northern coast of Colombia to Jamaica in
about a day.

Only a small amount of the cocaine is consumed by the local market, where a
kilogram fetches $6,000. Most is smuggled to the United States, where the
same amount sells for $20,000.

Most smugglers stockpile large shipments here with the help of people like
Gordon, then send smaller deliveries north on airline flights, cruise ships,
or smaller boats.

With unemployment running officially at 15 percent -and in reality much
higher -finding "mules" to carry the drugs is easy. Over a thousand
Jamaicans -out of a population of 2.6 million -were arrested for possession
of cocaine during the last two years, and most were also charged with
attempting to export the drug, police say.

The extent of Jamaica's role is summed up by one statistic: according to
U.S. Customs, 64 percent of those arrested for cocaine smuggling at U.S.
airports between October 1998 and September 1999 were coming from Jamaica,
though not all were Jamaican.

Spence said the Air Jamaica hub in Montego Bay, with flights going to major
cities in Europe and North American, was a "hub for drug smuggling."

American officials cite the 1998 "shiprider agreement" allowing U.S. ships
and airplanes to chase smugglers into Jamaican waters and airspace as a sign
that officials here are serious. But corruption hampers the efforts, says
the U.S. State Department.

"Corruption, especially among members of the security and law enforcement
forces," remains a serious problem, said the department's most recent report
on Jamaica, published in April 1998.

Many of Kingston's gangs were created in the 1970s to fight turf wars on
behalf of political parties. The drug business has helped make them
independent, but they retain a loose affiliation with politicians that,
Lemahieu suggested, might hamper interdiction.

"The Jamaican politicians created a Frankenstein and they have not
controlled it," Lemahieu said. "They are trying to get rid of the ties. How
far they will succeed only the future will tell."

Yet while smuggling activities are up, cocaine use has not flourished among
Jamaicans -partly because the popular, marijuana-consuming Rastafarians
despise the drug. "It's never been accepted the way marijuana has," said
Winston Mendes-Davidson, head of Jamaica's Medical Association.