COLOMBIAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS SHIFT BACK TO FLORIDA SMUGGLING ROUTES

MIAMI (AP) Colombia's cocaine traffickers are switching back to their
old smuggling routes into Florida, easing out of the Mexican pipeline
because of tougher enforcement and greedy partners.

Federal agents in Florida seized nearly seven tons of Colombian cocaine in
the past two months, a lot of it hidden aboard cargo ships from Venezuela.

Just don't look for a return to the Cocaine Cowboy days of the 1980s, when
Florida was flooded with millions in excess cash and headlines were filled
with the speedboats, lowflying planes and public gun battles that inspired
TV's Miami Vice.

"We're not worried about that street violence that once made Miami
notorious," Customs spokesman Michael Sheehan said.

"Nowadays, drug smuggling is conducted like any other international
business," he said. "Men in business suits, carrying briefcases, rather
than that old Miami Vice look."

Increased enforcement around Florida led the Colombian drug cartels to
align their business with Mexican drug families in the early 1990s,
shipping cocaine by land and air into the U.S. Southwest.

The noticeable shift back to Florida came after President Clinton ordered a
tough new antidrug strategy aimed at eliminating drug smuggling from Mexico.

"It's almost as if this were a balloon, so that if you squeeze this one
place along the Southwest border you have a bubble somewhere else
here in Florida," said Raphael Lopez, special agentincharge for the
Customs Service in Miami.

Another reason more drugs are coming through Florida is that "the
Colombians have grown tired of dealing with the Mexicans," said William
Mitchell, special agentincharge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's
Miami Field Division.

Mexican drug lords have upped the price for transporting cocaine for the
Colombians, Mitchell said.

"It's costing the Colombians more to ship through Mexico than to put it on
a ship in Colombia and just bring it in, or to take it to Venezuela, and
mask it as if it were a Venezuelan product," said Lopez.

Customs agents weren't surprised at the Colombian turnabout.

"It's just that if you consider the economics of the situation at the time,
it was more convenient to do it through the Southwest (U.S.) border," Lopez
said. "Then, as those costs increased, then the Colombians are going to
come back to their historic market, where they have stable costs."