cannabisnews.com: What Can Be Done at the Border? What Can Be Done at the Border? Posted by FoM on December 27, 2001 at 21:43:25 PT By Peter Reuter Source: Washington Post Many analogies have been drawn between the struggle against drugs and the effort to keep terrorism out of America. Though drug trafficking presents a very different threat from terrorism, one lesson to be learned from the U.S. war on drugs, now about 15 years old, is the inherent limits on the use of border controls in a society that values the free flow of commerce and traffic.Interdiction, aimed at seizing drugs and smugglers on their way to the United States, was the centerpiece of the early days of that war. In 1988 Congress passed a resolution calling on the Department of Defense to "seal the borders" against drugs, a mission for which the then-secretary, Frank Carlucci, and the services had little enthusiasm. As Carlucci said in congressional testimony, the military knows how to defend a perimeter against anyone who attacks; it is less good at working out which civilians should be allowed across and which shouldn't.The U.S. Customs Bureau commissioner at the time, William von Raab, a drug war enthusiast given to blunt statement, said that his agency could indeed seal the borders. Doing so would require that every ship and truck halt 10 miles from the border to be completely searched and every passenger frisked. Since the nation would not tolerate that, it would have to tolerate a lot of cocaine and heroin crossing its borders.Indeed, that is the case. A surprisingly large share of the roughly 400 tons of cocaine shipped to the United States each year is seized, at least one-quarter and perhaps as much as 40 percent. But the cost of replacing a kilo of cocaine is low enough ($1,000 to $2,000 in Colombia, compared with $20,000 over the border in Texas) that simply putting 100 kilograms into a cargo container and launching it off to the United States is worth doing, even with a high seizure rate.For those interested in biological warfare agents, the experience with another drug, heroin, is more relevant and even more chilling. No more than 10 percent of imports are seized. Most heroin seems to enter the country in small quantities, one to 10 kilograms. Some enters with "body-packers," who swallow about a pound of the drug distributed among dozens of latex packages; these burst often enough that there is a small medical literature on the "body packer syndrome."Most drug smugglers end up being caught, but that is because they smuggle frequently. Any one trip is low risk. Fifty low-risk events produce some very high risks. Terrorists need make only one or two entries to accomplish their task. Moreover, for some purposes terrorists do not need to be carrying something illegal. Unlike drug smugglers, it is they themselves who represent much of the danger.Maintaining a list of known drug smugglers has had limited success in catching or deterring them. Given the intensity of the current anti-terrorism intelligence effort, a list of terrorists might be more effective than usual, but there's not a lot of basis for optimism.Why has the United States been unable to protect the borders against cocaine and heroin? It is not ambivalence about the task; polls repeatedly show high support for drug interdiction. But drug interdiction competes with other considerations. Delays for travelers at the Mexican border (where about three-quarters of a million people cross every day) bring loud complaints. Unfortunately, this is the entry point for most cocaine and much of heroin and methamphetamine coming into this country. Shippers demand that their goods move promptly to allow competition with other nations.One important factor may make the effort to prevent terrorists from entering the country a bit easier than the drug interdiction program. The scale of drug smuggling is so great that interdiction is a predictable event, like a tax; it makes drugs a little more expensive and not much else. Few people any longer believe that even a big seizure does much to make America a safer nation. That dramatically reduces the public's willingness to put up with much inconvenience.Catching a terrorist coming across the border can prevent some specific people from dying. Moreover, if there is not an endless supply of suicidal and competent terrorists, each one caught may make a difference. That makes it easier to maintain popular support and keep agents and agencies focused on the task, even in the face of the great tedium of search.But if success is possible, it will require a great deal more cost and inconvenience in international travel and commerce than the nation has so far been willing to bear to keep out drugs.The writer is a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and co-author (with Robert MacCoun) of "Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times and Places."Source: Washington Post (DC)Author: Peter ReuterPublished: Friday, December 28, 2001; Page A23 Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com Related Articles:Call for Military Has Border Uneasy http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11628.shtmlDrug Seizures Soar at U.S. Bordershttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11588.shtmlThe Drug War vs. The War on Terrorhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11556.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #8 posted by lookinside on December 28, 2001 at 19:49:48 PT: firedog... i've been waiting to hear about a major coca cultivation bust in the U.S. the same with poppies(opium).sooner or later somebody will figure out how. the guvmint just needs to make it worthwhile. [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by firedog on December 28, 2001 at 15:14:16 PT Suppose the borders were tightened... If the borders are tightened enough, or if enough acres of coca are eradicated in Columbia, cocaine will go up in price, and growing cocaine indoors in the U.S. will eventually become cost-effective. Then production will simply move within our borders (as it already has for marijuana).Then what? [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by Jose Melendez on December 28, 2001 at 12:36:22 PT: Drug War is TREASON from: http://www.drcnet.org/wol/217.html#doingourpart On Thursday, December 20, a Travis County Sheriff's SWAT team accompanied by members of the Capital Area Drug Task Force burst into a mobile home in Del Valle, a largely Hispanic neighborhood on Austin's far east side, to execute a narcotics warrant. Within minutes, Martinez was dead, shot by a so-far unnamed deputy. Martinez was not the target of the raid and was not armed, but happened to be spending the night on the trailer's couch. The deputy may be unnamed, but he has been identified as having accompanied murdered Deputy Ruiz during a similar drug raid in which Ruiz lost his life. It now appears that a deputy traumatized by the death of his partner in a paramilitary-style drug raid responded with lethal force to a sudden movement by a startled Martinez, allowing an earlier preventable tragedy to lead to the most recent one. "To me, it was either an accident or a situation where the officer felt he was in danger," Travis County Sheriff Margo Frasier told the Austin American-Statesman. "I'm not sure which it was. At this point, there is a possibility that a mistake was made." The killing of an innocent person wasn't the only mistake, according to the American-Statesman. According to warrants filed by sheriff's deputies, the house to be raided was supposed to be full of automatic weapons, as well as cocaine and methamphetamines, but no weapons of any sort were found, only a single bullet. The deaths of Ruiz and Martinez have led at least one police watchdog group calling for an end to paramilitarized night-time drug raids on homes. "It doesn't make sense that law enforcement can't make the drug case unless they find the person at the home with the drugs at the moment," said Ann de Llano, spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union's Texas Police Accountability Project. "They can arrest the person and then execute a search warrant in a safe circumstance, while the person is not barred up in his home ready to shoot," she told the American-Statesman. "The sad part is you're not only risking the citizen's life but the officer's life, too. We don't need any more dead officers in Austin." Local law enforcement officials continued to defend the raids, however. "We'd love to call them [drug suspects] up and say 'C'mon down here and bring your dope,'" Travis County sheriff's spokesman Roger Wade told the American-Statesman. "But that's not realistic or logical. We need to keep doing what we're doing." ...or we'll be forced to go fight REAL crime, eh Roger? Arrest Prohibition - Drug War is TREASON [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on December 28, 2001 at 09:20:06 PT Borders are not people and cannot be harmed Why has the United States been unable to protect the borders against cocaine and heroin?Because the borders have no problem because they are imaginary lines drawn by humans and not physical entities that exist in the material world. Borders are political objects that exist according to political agreements between humans. As political objects, borders cannnot be "harmed" in any physical sense by drugs and need no "protection" from drugs.The people are the ones that have problems with drugs. The people are real material physical beings. They are the ones whose needs we should be addressing. But people in Mexico and people in America have heroin and cocaine problems. Protecting the border does nothing to protect the people on either side of it from themselves and their own decisions.Political writers care about political objects and political topics more than they could ever care about any real people.So here we are, drowning in more politics and more political constructions that obscure even more the human element, as they call it, in the problem.It's far more meaningful to discuss how to protect PEOPLE from harm than it is to discuss how to protect BORDERS from harm. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by lookinside on December 28, 2001 at 09:04:52 PT: TroutMask... the dome would have to be very thick, and extend a couple miles into the ground...there are some brilliant and very determined people out there...the only solution to drugs entering the U.S. is to expel everyone who ever has, or ever will want to burn a fatty or do a line, etc. this is a demand driven industry... [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by TroutMask on December 28, 2001 at 08:28:57 PT Here's what can be done... If we build a giant dome over the United States and never let anyone or anything in or out, we can stop the entry of opiates and cocaine.Anything short of that will fail.-TM [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by freedom fighter on December 28, 2001 at 04:40:24 PT I'll second that null,,Imagine 20 yr from now and they keep saying this same song..Gee!ff [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by null on December 28, 2001 at 04:03:19 PT check your facts ...U.S. war on drugs, now about 15 years old... For a person who has written a book on the "Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times and Places" it seems quite odd to assert the WoD started in 1986. [ Post Comment ] Post Comment