The new student at Beeville's A.C. Jones High School bought drugs his first day of classes when he arrived in February.

He was a below-average student but passed most of his classes when school ended in May. He also was a Bee County Sheriff's Department officer working undercover.

The peace-officer-turned-student was recruited from outside the department to infiltrate a ring of student drug dealers, said sheriff's department Capt. Daniel Caddell. The officer did nothing but attend school full time, with only three school administrators knowing his true identity.

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Regarding Tom Pauken's commentary (See: "Time to do something -- again -- about drug use in this country," June 29), the drug war is in large part a war on marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. The illegal status of marijuana may serve to glamorize it among rebellious youth. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the U.S. than any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that punishes those citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis.

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As a retired police detective, I learned that modern prohibition generates 70-80 percent of all felony crime in Texas. My profession has spent a trillion tax dollars since 1971 to arrest 38 million on drug charges. For all that, drugs are cheaper, stronger and easier for teens to buy.

Pauken wants to return to the '80s. Even then, teens died selling drugs, terrorists earned billions in the drug trade and Texas built dozens of prisons -- and one new college.

Howard J. Wooldridge, Dallas

[end]

For South Texas Vendors of the Ceremonial Drug, Business Is Dwindling

A sign in front of Mauro Morales' Rio Grande City home announces his business for everyone to see. "Peyote Dealer," it proclaims in large block letters.

Each day, drivers passing by slow down for double takes and some even pull over, get out and snap photos.

Who can blame them?, Morales asks with a mischievous grin.

He is, after all, part of a dwindling fraternity.

The slight, 65-year-old Rio Grande City man is one of only three people in the United States - all in Starr and Webb counties - -authorized to harvest and sell the psychedelic cactus.

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Washington sophisticates had great fun ridiculing Nancy Reagan's "simplistic" Just Say No campaign. Washington Monthly called it "Just Say Nonsense." Instead of "oversimplifying" a "complex problem," we should encourage "responsible use" of illegal drugs, the magazine editorialized, as if there could be responsible use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines.

But, it was surely not a coincidence that drug abuse declined during the Reagan years.

Former deputy drug czar Dr. Herbert Kleber, interviewed on PBS's Frontline, told the truth: "to diminish drug use, you need to de-glamorize and de-normalize drug use" in the manner of the Just Say No campaign, which "had a good effect in terms of decreasing initiation and use."

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The price of vice is going up along with gas and food.

Southeast Texas law enforcement officials said drug peddlers these days are charging more for less, and prostitutes are charging more for their services as well.

For Beaumont drug dealers, the price of doing business is higher here than the state average, according to the most recent numbers released by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Violet Szeleczky, Houston DEA public information officer, said kilo prices for cocaine and marijuana have increased as a result of problems smuggling the drugs across the border.

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Mexican President Felipe Calderon is waging a battle on two fronts.

Unfortunately, one of the enemies is on his side -- corrupt law enforcement officials.

In Mexico, the war on drugs is also a war on the cops who aid the cartels, and Calderon deserves credit for recognizing that both enemies must be vanquished.

As enemies, the dirty cops are more insidious than the drug lords, because they use their badges as shields, abetting the criminals they are supposed to be fighting.

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Re: "Legalizing pot doesn't make us safer.

We are winning the fight against drug use and abuse, says James Capra," Tuesday Viewpoints.

As a police officer who worked the trenches for 18 years, my experience is that marijuana prohibition dramatically reduces public safety.

Street cops spend millions of hours chasing adults who use marijuana in their homes. Detectives spend hundreds of thousands of hours searching for pot gardens. Every hour spent in this pursuit is one less hour to arrest the deadly DUI, the child porn producers and others who would hurt innocents.

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For the first time in many months, a citizen signed up for public comment to discuss random drug testing at Olney High School during the Monday, June 16, meeting of the Olney ISD Board of Trustees.

Spencer Key spoke in favor of beginning random drug testing at OHS, and also in favor of closing campus for lunch. He brought a small group of supporters who did not speak. During public comment session, each individual is allowed only five minutes to speak. The board cannot discuss or act on information brought up during the public comment session if the information is not already included on the agenda.

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I think it would be a good idea to legalize drugs: marijuana, cocaine, meth, crystal meth and whatever else is out there. Sell it at Wal-Mart, Walgreens and at your local grocery and drug stores.

The tax money would help each state, and the DEA could place its efforts on robberies and murders.

People are hooked on drugs, and will continue to take them. There are organizations to help, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcohol can be bought at the grocery, drug store and liquor store. True, people abuse it as well as their loved ones -- AA can help them if they want help.

We want to give $4.1 billion to help Mexico beat down the drug cartels. Ridiculous. Make drugs legal.

Lyn Brooks

Alamogordo

[end]

Actually, there is only one origin of the drug violence: prohibition.

End the prohibition and the violence will end.

When is the last time the El Paso Times had stories about alcohol cartels killing each other and innocent bystanders?

Probably 1933, the year we terminated the counterproductive policy of alcohol prohibition.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

Re: "Congress must help Mexico fight gangs," (Our Turn, Saturday):

Mexico's drug war has escalated to the bloodbaths of violence during alcohol prohibition. Our current prohibition creates the black market funding the cartel terrorists. Official lawlessness rules once again! The tool we need to fight drug abuse is compassion. Treat nonviolent abusers as patients, not criminals.

The cumulative effect of current policy is becoming obvious. While we police individual recreational and medicinal use of drugs, murderers and violent sexual predators roam free.

Repeal Prohibition! Restore justice in America. In the world, construct science-based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Get tough on violent crime! Warriors can get their adrenaline rush increasing public safety, chasing killers and other violent predators.

Colleen McCool

[end]

AUSTIN -- The federal government has poured millions of dollars into stopping undocumented workers from crossing in remote border regions, but land ports lack the resources to prevent the flow of drugs and guns that fuel violence in Mexico, some experts and critics of U.S. border security policy said this week.

"It's designed to stop illegal immigration, undocumented workers, not so much for drugs," said Tony Payan, political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Payan and others said drug traffickers use ports of entry to transport much of their illicit wares, and the U.S. focus on areas between the ports has ignored some of the root causes of violence that some worry could spill north. But federal agents said criminals use all routes available to get their loads into the United States, and the agency that oversees land ports reported increased drug seizures this year and last.

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Cartels Driven By Desire For Big Payoff

When she was 10 years old, Patricia Montejano sat in a truck outside a stash house in Kansas waiting for a close relative. Although she didn't know exactly what was going on, she could sense the tension in the air.

She was in the company of a drug trafficker who was dropping a load of marijuana.

Montejano said she and her sisters always went along for the ride from JuA!rez to points throughout the United States because law enforcement officials were less likely to suspect an adult with children.

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There's data and a theory that Mexico's drug cartels are on the run in spite of all the violence in the country's northern states.

So say officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mexican government.

It's good to hear there are record seizures of illegal drugs and that smugglers are having to use desperate measures to get their contraband into the U.S.

But what should be looked at closely is that this joint announcement last week was punctuated by a call to the U.S. Congress to pass President Bush's $4.1 billion Merida Initiative to help Mexican President Felipe Calderon in his fight to beat down the drug cartels.

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Officials Work to Keep City's Image Intact

As the violence in Juarez continues -- two Texas residents were shot and four Mexican police officers were killed last week -- some El Pasoans are taking steps to ensure that they don't get caught in the line of fire.

Although El Paso officials say there is no reason for El Pasoans to worry, and city leaders are not concerned about the violence having an impact on this side of the river, there are subtle indications that the fallout from the brutal killing spree has already reached U.S. soil:

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Six Texas school districts were awarded nearly $800,000 in federal grants Wednesday for random student drug testing.

Texas is one of 20 states receiving the grants, which total $5.8 million nationwide, from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Department of Education.

The grants are intended for programs that test student athletes, students engaging in competitive, extracurricular or school-sponsored activities, or students who have opted into the random drug-testing program, according to a release from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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The Jasper Independent School District Board of Trustees hosted an open form Tuesday, May 27, to present information and answer questions about the proposed random drug testing policy to be implemented this coming school year.

The policy will require random drug testing of students in grades 7-12 who participate in school sponsored extracurricular activities plus students issued an on-campus parking permit. Affected students will be tested for the presence of legal and illegal drugs and alcohol at the beginning of the season in which he or she participates. In addition, students shall be randomly tested throughout the school year on as many as 18 dates.

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Some local high school students say they smell marijuana on their classmates' clothes at school.

Drugs are being brought to school and sometimes done on campus or nearby during the lunch hour. Some students are smoking marijuana in their cars right before class and others exchange drugs in the hallways or bathrooms, several students say.

When asked if there are drugs on campus, Coronado High School junior Joe Delao said "of course there are," reacting as if it was a dumb question.

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AUSTIN -- As lawmakers last week approved sending millions to help Mexico with its war against narco-traffickers, experts said the government is doing little to address the root cause of that violence and reduce drug use in the U.S.

"Throwing money into the drug interdiction processes is tantamount to saying you can't prevent drugs coming into this country," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

The U.S. House on Tuesday approved the Bush administration's Merida Initiative, authorizing $1.6 billion in aid to Mexico over the next three years.

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