OFFICERS SAY RULING HURTS DRUG EFFORTS

Law officers say a recent state appeals court decision is hurting their
efforts to curb the abuse of addictive prescription drugs flowing into
Texas from Mexico.

The decision by the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio overturned the 1996
conviction of Dianne B. Wright, a North Texas woman who got prescriptions
for tranquilizers and diet pills in Nuevo Laredo and brought the drugs into
Texas.

Lynn Ellison, a district attorney in South Texas, said the appeals court
decision has provided legal cover to those who would buy drugs at Mexican
pharmacies and use them to get high or make money.

"It's set up a situation where these . . . [people] are going down there
and getting 100 to 300 pills and on their way back, they pull out a copy of
a news story about the 4th Court's opinion and shake it in the face of the
highway patrol," Mr. Ellison said.

Ms. Wright, a 45-year-old grandmother who lives in the Sherman-Denison
area, said she obtained her diet pills to lose weight and got the Valium to
combat anxiety about a new job in a new city.

"I thought I was following all the laws," she said. "I never knew I was
breaking any state law."

Ms. Wright said she and her son went across the border on Oct. 18, 1995, to
go shopping in Nuevo Laredo. She said she met with a Mexican doctor,
obtained her prescriptions and filled them at a Mexican pharmacy.

On her way back into Texas, Ms. Wright said she showed the written
prescriptions and the drugs to U.S. Customs officers at the international
bridge. She told them the drugs were for personal use. Customs officers
waved her into the United States, saying she met requirements of federal law.

But state troopers, local law officers and district attorneys in South
Texas were reading a state law that seemed to say something different.

Ms. Wright and her son were driving north on Interstate 35 when they were
stopped for speeding in Frio County, a rural area about 50 miles north of
Laredo. The Frio County Sheriff's Department found the pharmaceuticals and
charged her with felony drug possession punishable by up to 10 years in
prison.

The Texas Controlled Substances Act, law officers said, made Ms. Wright's
drugs illegal in Texas because they were not prescribed by a physician
licensed in the United States and authorized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration to dispense narcotics.

"You have no idea what this nightmare has been like," Ms. Wright said.
"I've spent more than $5,000 and made nine trips to Frio County in the last
two years."

Mr. Ellison, the Frio County district attorney, said abuse of
pharmaceutical drugs from Mexico has been a problem in South Texas for many
years, but he acknowledged that Ms. Wright did not fit the profile of
wayward young Americans who run across the border to obtain psychoactive
drugs to get high.

"The vast majority of them are young, not ill in any way, with enough
personal resources to see a doctor in the U.S.," he said. "They go into
Mexico and get the stuff for purposes of abuse."

Johnny Hatcher, a high-ranking drug enforcement officer in the Texas
Department of Public Safety, said his office has no statistics on how many
people get arrested under circumstances similar to those that landed Ms.
Wright in trouble.

But he said the appeals court decision in her case has taken away one tool
to fight drug abuse.

"It's a mistake to just say, 'Bring it on.' " he said.

Mr. Ellison's office prosecuted Ms. Wright under the Texas law. A jury
convicted her and handed down a two-year probationary sentence. She
appealed the conviction to the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio.

Associate Justice Catherine Stone, in overturning the conviction, said Frio
County law officers gave the state law an absurd interpretation that also
could be used against foreign tourists.

"Any foreign visitor to our state traveling with personal medication would
be subject to felony prosecution for illegal possession of controlled
substances," she wrote.

The justices said Ms. Wright possessed her drugs in accord with federal law
and that using a contrary state law to arrest people makes no sense.

"It is simply too far beyond reasoned analysis - much less a system of
justice - to attribute to the Texas Legislature the intent to criminalize
possession that is lawful under federal law," Justice Sarah B. Duncan wrote
in a concurring opinion.

In a second concurring opinion, Justice Tom Rickhoff said he hoped the
court's decision put an end to "this pernicious side skirmish in the war on
drugs."

But the Wright case is not over.

Mr. Ellison has asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest
criminal appeals court in Texas, to review the 4th Court's decision, find
it in error and reinstate Ms. Wright's conviction.

The 4th Court erred when it ignored the state law's wording that requires
prescriptions to be dispensed by U.S.-licensed doctors, Mr. Ellison said.

"What they held is that prosecutors ought to have enough sense to realize
when the law ought to say something even though it doesn't really say it,"
he said. "The law says what it says."

Thomas F. Lee, the district attorney in Del Rio, another Texas border town,
said the appeals court decision in the Wright case has ended similar
prosecutions in his district.

"I know most of them are kids going across [the border] to get drugs and
get high," he said. "I guarantee you they get anything they want for $40.
The Legislature is going to have to do something about this practice."

Drug abuse experts throughout the Southwest say powerful stimulants and
narcotic depressants are too easily obtainable in Mexican border pharmacies
from Brownville, Texas, to San Diego, Calif.

The problem, they said, is clear: How do you prosecute drug offenders and
still protect legitimate medical patients?

Dr. Marv Shepherd, a pharmacy professor at the University of Texas, said he
once believed that the vast majority of Americans seeking prescription
drugs in Mexico were older people looking for cheap prices on medicines for
high blood pressure, ulcers, diabetes and other ailments.

A careful study revealed otherwise, he said.

Dr. Shepherd reviewed 5,624 customs declaration forms at the Laredo border
crossing between July 1994 and June 1995. Each form contained information
about drug products purchased by U.S. residents.

The study dealt only with prescription drugs, not substances such as
cocaine and marijuana.

Dr. Shepherd found that 14 of the top 15 prescription drugs brought into
the United States at Laredo during that one-year period were "controlled
substances" - opiate-based narcotics such as Neopercodan or stimulants such
as Ritalin.

Rohypnol, the so-called date rape drug, ranked high on the list. The
federal government has banned importation of Rohypnol since Dr. Shepherd's
1994-95 study.

The study showed that almost 70 percent of the people bringing prescription
drugs back into the United States had bought Valium, a popular tranquilizer
that many illegal drug abusers take to get high.

Dr. Shepherd estimated that 11,000 Valium tablets a day, or about 4 million
a year, came into the United States at the Laredo port of entry during the
12 months covered by the study.

The study did not involve any of the other 25 border-crossing points on the
Texas-Mexico border.

The median age of men filing the drug-related customs declarations was 24,
meaning half were younger and half were older. The median age for women was
34.

"These findings do not support the assumption that the majority of people
who purchase pharmaceutical products in Mexico and declare the products at
the U.S. Customs port of entry are elderly," Dr. Shepherd reported.

"Young people are stretching these federal rules beyond belief," he said.
"There is no doubt in my mind."

Drug abuse experts say Dr. Shepherd's study provides a definitive look at
the Mexican prescription drug problem. Even so, they say it doesn't reveal
the true dimensions because it didn't deal with pharmaceuticals smuggled
across the border and never reported on customs declaration forms.

Mr. Hatcher, the state drug enforcement officer, said the federal Food and
Drug Administration's ban on importation of Rohypnol and most anabolic
steroids might point the way to one solution.

"I've always wondered why the FDA hasn't banned some of these other drugs
from coming in," he said.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could reverse the 4th Court in the
Wright case. And the Legislature could amend state drug laws to give police
officers more tools to combat abuse of Mexican pharmaceuticals, Mr. Hatcher
said.

"Peace officers are caught in the middle of this," he said. "Everybody from
every state in the union will be coming through Texas with these drugs. I
just don't think that is the intent of the federal government."

Ms. Wright said her arrest was a mistake that she is determined to correct
in court.

"I've still got a dark cloud hanging over my head," she said. "I preached
to my kids about the evils of drugs, and now I've become a convicted drug
person for no reason."

© 1998 The Dallas Morning News