Record drug seizures on US-Mexico border

More US enforcement is one reason. But shipments from cartels may also be rising.

By Faye Bowers | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 7, 2007 edition

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Phoenix - Seizures of illegal drugs – from marijuana to heroin – are on the rise along the US-Mexican border again this year, breaking the previous record for major busts set just last year.

"We're overwhelmed with marijuana," says Anthony Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Tucson. "We passed last year's record about two months ago."

Marijuana is the most-seized drug, followed by cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, Mr. Coulson says. "All of them are trending up."

The jump in drug seizures could be a result of tighter borders – from more border patrol agents to new technology at ports of entry – and newly established checkpoints within the United States. But the increase could also mean that more drugs are being shipped across the border – possibly because Mexico has had a good growing season, much as Afghanistan did in producing record numbers of opium poppies this year. Or it could be because two drug cartels apparently formed an alliance to thwart a crackdown by Mexico's government and are now shipping more drugs to the north.

According to US Customs and Border Protection figures, which include only amounts that CBP agents seize, 1.7 million pounds of marijuana were seized along the US border with Mexico so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. A little more than half that amount was seized in Arizona. The previous record, for all of fiscal 2006, was about 1.3 million pounds.

DEA figures, which include drugs that all law-enforcement agencies working in the state take in, are even higher. At the end of August, with one month left in the fiscal year, federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies in Arizona had already confiscated 1.1 million pounds of marijuana coming across the Mexico border. In all of fiscal 2006, officers intercepted 885,573 pounds of marijuana crossing the Mexico-Arizona border.

"Whether they're trying to push more through or we're better at seizing dope is still a question we all have," Coulson says. "We use it as an indicator, although a poor one, that there's an increase in trafficking."

That makes sense to Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University in Tempe who tracks cross-border issues. The underground economy works much like the formal economy, she says. "If it's a good year for crops, they have more to export to the US," she says.

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