MORE DRUGS BEING STOPPED AT BORDER

Agents Fear Busts Reflect Jump In Mexican Traffic

Cocaine and marijuana seizures inside the southwestern U.S. border and
along Mexico's Pacific coast have increased sharply in volume in the past
two years, alarming U.S. law enforcement authorities who say Mexican
traffickers are sending greater quantities and larger loads of drugs into
the United States.

Seizures of marijuana by federal agencies along the U.S.-Mexican border,
where 70 percent of allillicit drugs enter the country, are up as much as
33 percent over last year, according to U.S. drug interdiction agencies.
And between 1991 and 1998, seizures per year have jumped from 113 tons to
720 tons.

At the same time, cocaine shipments off Mexico's Pacific Coast appear to
have increased dramatically, and this year, the U.S. Coast Guard made the
largest cocaine hauls in its history in both the Pacific and the Caribbean.

The heavier flow of drugs has exacerbated problems of trust and cooperation
between American and Mexican authorities, and it is particularly troubling
to U.S. law enforcement in light of new statistics showing rising marijuana
use among U.S. teenagers.

While many officials credit improved coordination among U.S. law
enforcement agencies for the increase in seizures, they say the trend
clearly indicates more drugs are arriving in the United States. U.S.
authorities estimate they capture only 10 to 15 percent of all drugs
smuggled into the country.

The year's mounting tally of drug seizures, along with new U.S.
calculations of significantly increased cocaine production in Colombia and
expanding opium poppy and marijuana production in Mexico, are sending
``shock waves through the system,'' said a senior U.S. official involved in
monitoring drug trafficking.

Mexican authorities dispute some of the U.S. conclusions, but said they
would not compile Mexican seizure totals until next month and declined
repeated requests to discuss this year's trends until their figures are
made public. Earlier this year, Mexico's top anti-drug official, Mariano
Herran Salvatti, said he believed that cocaine shipments into Mexico had
dropped 50 percent this year, but he did not provide detailed supporting
data.

Herran said in a press conference this summer that marijuana and poppy
yields were up in Mexico because eradication was becoming increasingly
difficult, noting that ``the illicit plantations are turning ever more away
from populated areas and into federal lands in the mountains.''

Mexican drug cartels appear to be reorganizing their operations to improve
the transport of South American cocaine and Mexican marijuana and heroin to
the United States at a time when many Mexican anti-narcotics units are in
serious disarray and have made little progress in targeting the country's
biggest cartel leaders, according to U.S. law enforcement agencies.

``The drug groups are flexible and iinnovative and are using evermore
sophisticated and well-organized countersurveillance and
counterintelligence,'' according to a new U.S. government intelligence
assessment. ``They are constantly . . . identifying and exploiting law
enforcement predictability, patterns, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and
routines.''

While politicians at the highest levels of both countries continue to say
that cooperation has improved, Richard A. Fiano, chief of operations for
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told a congressional subcommittee
in September: ``Until such time that adequate anti-corruption assurances
and safeguards can be implemented, DEA will exercise extreme caution in
sharing sensitive information with our Mexican counterparts.''

Fiano described the ``investigative achievements'' of Mexico's most elite
anti-drug units against major cartels as ``minimal.'' A special fugitive
apprehension team created by Mexico's anti-narcotics agency to track down
the leaders of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix cartel, one of Mexico's two
largest drug mafias, ``has not participated in any significant enforcement
activity,'' Fiano said.

Even Mexican political leaders this year became so frustrated with failed
attempts to clean up the country's corrupt law enforcement agencies that
they created a new national police force for fighting drug trafficking and
other crime. Top political leaders also pledged a multimillion dollar
increase in support to the military and existing civilian agencies for
fighting the drug traffickers.

The surge in Mexican marijuana loads comes in the face of new U.S.
government statistics showing that marijuana use among youth between the
ages of 12 and 17 has doubled in the past six years.

In the first nine months of 1999, marijuana seizures nationwide were up 29
percent, from 513 tons during the same period last year to 663 tons this
year.

Although those figures include domestically produced marijuana, the seizure
figures for Mexican marijuana are up by even more staggering amounts.
Border seizures are up about 33 percent, and in southeastern Texas -- which
has become the hottest transit zone on the international boundary in recent
months -- marijuana seizures were up nearly 70 percent over last year,
according to law enforcement agencies.

In February, five tons of Mexican marijuana was seized at one south Texas
residence, and a month later, another five tons was captured at a second
home.