Christmas is prime marijuana-smuggling time

FALFURRIAS, Texas — As a steady stream of traffic pulled through the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint, Agent Johnny did not look twice at the gravel trucks, the 18-wheelers or even the powder-blue Cadillac. But he knew instantly that the green Dodge pickup was carrying more than firewood.

Johnny, a dope-sniffing Belgian Malinois, started barking like mad, pawing and pressing his snout against the driver's door. When agents pulled out the seat, there it was: one-half pound or so of marijuana, bundled in plastic, in a cab doused with air freshener to hide the smell.

It is dope time again. Every year from October to January, marijuana smuggling into the United States skyrockets as farmers from Mexico to Colombia rush their harvest to market.

"A lot of these guys are trying to buy Christmas presents, so they want to sell what they have, then get home to spend time with their families," said Will Glaspy, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Since Oct. 1, Border Patrol and Customs Service agents working in the southernmost tip of Texas, from Laredo to Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico, have seized more than 93 tons of marijuana with an estimated value exceeding $150 million.

That haul, which officials said marks a slight increase over last year, represents an average of more than a ton a day. It is stashed behind truck seats, mixed in with loads of tomatoes, stuffed into hollowed-out floor beams of flat-bed trucks and, in one case, stuffed underneath a disabled grandmother sitting in the front seat of a car.

Some drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, are not as bulky and are easier to conceal. Agents at this checkpoint, 60 miles north of the border crossing at McAllen, Texas, found 12,000 Ecstasy tablets hidden in the clothing of a bus passenger Sunday.

Smuggling of these potent drugs usually grabs headlines. But officials along one of the busiest drug corridors in North America say smugglers are bringing in staggering amounts of marijuana from Mexico, taking chances with bigger, heftier loads because economics are on their side.

The U.S. government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's 2001 Household Survey of drug use found that nearly 20 percent of youths surveyed between 12 and 17 reported using marijuana at least once. That compared with about 3 percent who reported using Ecstasy and a little more than 2 percent who reported using cocaine.

Glaspy, the DEA spokesman, said marijuana prices vary widely by quality and by where it is sold, so it is impossible to estimate the total value of U.S. sales. But he said marijuana smokers are front-line consumers in a multibillion-dollar industry.

The front door of that business is at this highway checkpoint on Route 281, a corridor of asphalt through endless fields of board-flat scrublands. Officials said this tip of southern Texas is popular with smugglers because it is the shortest route to the United States from fields in southern Mexico and South America. Major border crossings from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso, Texas, or Tijuana into San Diego, are farther north, adding distance and danger of being caught to each trip, officials said.

Route 281 is the main route from McAllen north to San Antonio, where major highways branch out toward huge markets in Houston, Austin, Dallas and beyond. Every few miles, police can be seen searching cars. And the Border Patrol keeps a sky-watch unit along the roadside, a sort of cherry picker from which agents with infrared sensing devices look out over the brush for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

In the last few miles leading up to the Border Patrol checkpoint, signs advertising shotgun shells and watermelons are replaced by those for Castaqedas Bail Bonds and Mireles Bail Bonds.

Steve Rose, the Border Patrol agent in charge of the checkpoint just south of Falfurrias, said an average of 31,000 cars and trucks a day pass through. Agents with trained dogs check each vehicle, looking for smuggled drugs or people. He said they discover someone trying to smuggle drugs as many as 10 times a day, especially in this busy time of the year.

"You can't stop everything," Rose said. "But I haven't been here yet in a 24-hour period where we haven't caught something."