Same Old Story

I know it's the newspaper's job to report the news, and the Times has done
so with Diana Washington Valdez's story about the El Paso Intelligence
Center and the recent visit and comments by high-level drug officials.

For a person 25 years old or so, that story and the officials' comments
about arresting drug kingpins and eliminating this, that, or the other drug
organization might seem like news. It might convince one that something is
finally being done about the drug problem.

However, for a person older than 40 Valdez's story is rather like reading
of similar events for the past 20 years. We can remember Pablo Escobar,
Carlos Lehder, various Ochoa fellows, and many other "drug kingpins" whose
arrests were supposed to end the drug problem.

All sorts of wonderful and inspirational language was used to describe how
quickly the drug trade would be brought to a screeching halt. Those stories
were misleading, meaningless bureaucratic hype. The government has been
telling this stale story for so long that it's become, for those of us old
enough to remember recent history, a known-to-be-false tale.

Richard Sinnott

Fort Pierce, Fla.