Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Justice deposes the ruling king of cocaine wars June 4, 1985

Say farewell to one of Dade County's most treacherous outlaws. His name is Conrado Valencia Zalgado, but he is better known as El Loco.

He was the original cocaine cowboy—a drug runner, machine gunner, bond jumper, high roller, master of disguise. In his prime, he made Pacino's Scarface look like Tommy Tune, but now Conrado's day is passed, his luck evaporated.

On May 22, a Dade County judge ordered El Loco to prison for the next century or so, thus closing a wild saga in our cavalcade of crime. For once, the good guys actually won.

Valencia was the bullet-headed, bare-chested maniac who hung from a speeding Audi and fired a submachine gun at rival coke peddlers on the Florida Turnpike Extension six years ago. When the cops caught up with the car, they found a dead Colombian named Jaime in the trunk.

Conrado, of course, professed total surprise.

Three months later, the late Jaime's friends retaliated, blasting two of El Loco's soldiers in the infamous Dadeland Massacre.

South Florida's image never fully recovered from that summer of 1979, and the torrent of national publicity that followed. Those of us who covered the cocaine wars imagined Dodge City reborn—each day seemed to bring a new atrocity, a new corpse (35 drug killings in one six-month stretch).

Along with their precious powder, the Colombians imported an astounding brand of violence. The crimes were almost impossible to solve—suspects and victims alike possessed an impenetrable array of fake names and phony passports. Among these alien gangsters, El Loco was a king.

After the turnpike shootout, he was charged with attempted murder and tossed in jail, but not for long. Conrado came up with the proverbial cash in a briefcase—$105,000 to be exact—posted bond and immediately disappeared.

He moved his family and his cocaine network to Los Angeles, where he became a laid-back Valley guy. He began calling himself Max, and cruised the Topanga Hills in a red 1948 DeSoto convertible (vanity tags, of course). He was having a swell time until some smart cops went through his garbage and found a phone bill with lots of calls to Miami.

From then on, El Loco's days were numbered. One summer night in 1982, Conrado Valencia opened the door to a girlfriend's apartment and wound up sucking on a gun barrel. A Los Angeles policeman was on the other end.

A few days later Metro-Dade detective Al Lopez and I went to California to see the legendary Loco. He was clanging around the Los Angeles County Jail in body manacles, and he was in a crummy mood. The cops out there had thrown the book at him; the cops back in Dade County were waiting their turn. El Loco didn't want to talk. Not to me, not to Lopez, not to anybody.

A California judge gave Conrado 30 years in prison, and last month he returned to Miami to face, at long last, the charges from the Turnpike shootout. He was convicted swiftly and on May 22, acting Circuit Judge Norman Gerstein sentenced "Jose Ramon Ruiz" (one of Conrado's many aliases) to 125 years.

Even if Loco escapes, which is always a possibility, he will find a different world awaiting him. The bloodiest era of the cocaine cowboys seems to be over, and flamboyant enforcers are less in demand. The word's gotten back to South America: Low profile means more profit.

True, cocaine is more plentiful now than in the summer of 1979, but at least the malls and highways are a little safer. These days most drug killers are polite enough to do their work in private.

Maybe that's the best we can hope for.

Adios, Conrado. Don't bother to write.

Dade's latest drug fight all wet—pass it around November 5, 1985

Everybody sing: Ninety-nine bottles of—on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of—. Take one down, pass it around ...

Congratulations, Dade County. No longer are we merely the Murder Capital of America; now we're the Specimen Capital, too.

First it was a couple hundred Miami police, proudly lining up to give samples to prove they're drug free. Not to be outdone, the Hialeah police followed suit. Next came the idea to test firefighters and even garbage collectors.

If they keep going at this rate, they're going to need a tanker truck to haul all this stuff away.

Lester Freeman of the Miami Citizens Against Crime has come up with the nuttiest scheme of all: All 52 MCAC members—staid bankers, lawyers, civic leaders, media honchos—are to have their exalted urine screened for drugs this week.

Curiously, the results will be reported anonymously, no names attached.

So much for this week's bizarre contribution to the national news: Miami's most prominent citizens cheerfully urinating into a cup to prove they're not whacked out on dope.

The point of this distasteful little charade? "A leadership demonstration," they say.

This isn't leadership, it's vaudeville. Is there another place in the civilized world where the Catholic archbishop has to urinate into a cup to prove he's clean?

As a member of MCAC, that's what the Rev. Edward McCarthy is going to do this week. Talk about trying the Lord's patience.

Who'd have expected such embarrassing publicity from the same folks so obsessed with purifying South Florida's image? Welcome to Miami. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—and how about some urine, while you're at it.

True, this kind of drug testing has become quite the national rage. The military uses it, and major league baseball wants to make it mandatory.

But a preplanned mass urinalysis is nothing but a gross publicity stunt. It doesn't prove you're honest. It doesn't prove you're competent. It doesn't even prove you're drug-free.

All it proves is that you know how to hit a cup.

Experts have contended that this kind of assembly-line testing can be unreliable, error-prone and unfair.

"The issue has become preposterous," says Dr. John P. Morgan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "It's like hunting Communists."

Dr. Morgan, who has written and testified extensively on mass urinalysis, says the most common type of test is flawed by "stunningly high false-positive results." The odds of a mistake are frequently compounded, he says, by incompetent lab work.

"God forbid you take the sample and mix it up with somebody else's. Or suppose you mismark one of the cups," adds Erich Gressmann, a toxicologist at the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office.

No wonder the MCAC doesn't want its members' names on these jars. There'd be hell to pay if Frank Borman's specimen somehow got mixed up with that of, say, rock musician David Crosby.

Even if the urine test is done correctly, it might show that you haven't snorted cocaine during the last 48 hours, or smoked a joint in a couple weeks, or dropped diazepam since yesterday morning. And that's all it shows.

And nobody in their right minds (Chuck Muncie being the possible exception) is going to voluntarily give a urine sample while he's flying high.

Mass urine testing is no way to get rid of crooked cops, and it's certainly no way for South Florida's civic pillars to demonstrate "leadership."

If they're so darn proud, maybe they ought to take the test in public. They could rent the Miami Beach Convention Hall, charge admission, maybe auction off a few celebrity specimens.

Call it Bladder-Mania.

Everybody sing ...

'Cocaine' tea has bitter taste of controversy January 13, 1986

As I write this, I'm wired to the gills on cocaine. Speeding like a bug-eyed banshee. Flying first-class on the David Crosby Express.

That's what urinalysis shows.

The only trouble is, I haven't touched any cocaine. Not a single toot. Is the test wrong? Technically, no.

But it's not right, either. Here's what happened and why it illustrates a hazard of drug-testing mania.

Last week you probably heard about Health IncaTea, a Peruvian product sold in health food stores. Health Inca is an herbal tea made from coca leaves. "Just one cup leaves you feeling up," the box promises. The leaves are purportedly "decocainized" to remove the cocaine—the same process used for Coca-Cola.

However, the Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported that Health Inca Tea was not cocaine-free, and that traces of the drug turned up in urine samples of 36 tea drinkers.

The amount was quite small and not considered harmful for normal persons (Andean dwellers have been chewing coca leaves for centuries with no ill effects). But, as you might expect, some stooge in California drank 80 tea bags' worth of Health Inca and complained of "severe agitation." Surprise, surprise.

The reaction to the journal article was predictable.The DBA and FDA immediately announced plans to reassess the legality of Health IncaTea, and wholesalers yanked crateloads out of circulation. Meanwhile, health food stores were inundated by consumers who generously offered to buy up all remaining coca tea bags (no doubt to keep them from the hands of impressionable youngsters).

The controversy was too crazy to pass up. The other day I bought one of the last boxes of Health IncaTea from Beehive Natural Foods in South Miami. Dr. Lee Hearn, a well-known Miami toxicologist and drug expert, offered to test my urine after I drank the tea.

Honestly, this is not great stuff. My sister remarked that it smells like old lawn cuttings, and the taste is not dissimilar. The only way to choke it down is with honey.

Last Tuesday I drank less than two ounces. A day later I stopped by Dr. Hearn's lab to give a urine sample—sure enough, the test revealed minute but detectable traces of a cocaine metabolite.

The big experiment began: On Wednesday I drank five cups between 8:30 P.M. and 11:30 P.M. That's 35 ounces of tea. God hasn't invented the bladder that can hold 35 ounces of hot tea, so it was a long night.

According to the journal report, each tea bag contains 4.8 milligrams of cocaine. Five tea bags are roughly equivalent to one line of street cocaine.

After the first cup, I felt slightly peppy and that's all. Pulse: normal. Frankly, I get more of a buzz from a can of Pepsi.

Even after five cups I wasn't exactly hanging from the ceiling by my fingernails. I wasn't grinding my teeth. I wasn't paranoid and I wasn't euphoric. I wasn't even doing my party impression of Robin Leach.

What I was, was bloated. Slept like a log. Pulse: normal.

The experiment continued: Thursday, 6 A.M. Groggily I aimed for the little bottle. Then the ultimate etiquette question of the 1980s: Exactly how does one carry a urine sample?

I tried an inside pocket of my coat, but then I thought: What if I get in a messy car accident? People will think I'm bleeding this stuff.

Next I tried the glove compartment, but then I thought: What if the top of the bottle comes unscrewed? It would ruin my new ZZTop tape, not to mention the auto warranty.

So I put the sample in my briefcase, which contains nothing of value, and drove to Toxicology Testing Service. On Friday Dr. Hearn called with the news: "A good strong positive."

Under both the common EMIT drug screen and the more sophisticated gas chromatography mass spectrometry, my urine tested positive. It showed cocaine and two related substances, benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine, the latter in such concentration that the test went off the scale, Dr. Hearn said.

"There was a bunch of cocaine," he said. "We found a complete pattern of someone who uses cocaine … a very high positive."

Except that all I had was coca tea, a legal product, purchased and consumed legally.

"It's not decocainized," Dr. Hearn asserted. The amount of cocaine in Health IncaTea probably isn't enough to get you high, he said, adding, "The only thing it can do is get you in trouble."

Why? Because many companies and branches of the military automatically fire, discharge or refuse to hire anyone whose urine shows benzoylecgonine. Courts, employers and DUI prosecutors have long recognized this as proof that someone has used illicit cocaine.

But, as shown, that's not necessarily so.

An expert witness in many drug trials, Dr. Hearn had never heard of Health IncaTea before last week. Most drug labs hadn't. It isn't known how many other such products are floating around.

Dr. Hearn plans more tests on the Health Inca brand. When he called the health food store to order a box, the price had jumped from $7 to $24—the true spirit of free enterprise!

I told my boss that I failed the drug test but he refused to fire me, even though it would have made a better ending to the column.

The real ending is not so funny.

With consternation Dr. Hearn described the current case of a U.S. Air Force man in Panama. The Air Force wants to dump him because his urine tested positive for cocaine. All along, the serviceman has insisted that he's never used the drug.

What he has done, he says, is drink a blend of coca tea, purchased regularly (and legally) at a small Panama shop.

Last week Dr. Hearn called Air Force investigators and told them to go find a box of that tea.

This time it's not a lark. This time a man's career is at stake.

TV drug raids rated a 'G'—for goofy December 5, 1986

The other night, while watching Geraldo Rivera attempt his now-famous undercover TV drug deal, I found myself sort of wishing that some crazed doper would do us all a favor and shoot him.

Not kill him or anything truly serious—maybe just a flesh wound to the buttocks, though the irony of such an injury would have been lost on most viewers.

In case you missed the action, Rivera hosted a two-hour documentary that included live drug busts from several cities, including Pompano Beach and Miami. The audience got to see real-life footage of cops pulling their guns, busting down crack-house doors, handcuffing squirming suspects and seizing relatively minuscule amounts of dope.

I can't say it wasn't exciting—drug raids are. Whether staging one for a national television audience is smart law enforcement or self-serving hokum is another matter.

In Houston, for example, the big take was less than a gram of cocaine and an ounce of grass; on the positive side, a reporter there says it was the first time in recent memory that the sheriff had bothered to show up at a crime scene.

As expected, Rivera's toughest critics were those most intimate with the narcotics business. Lou Garcia, a retired smuggler I've known for several years, tuned in to Geraldo's performance Tuesday night and quickly became disgusted. "It was a joke," he said. "I didn't finish. I switched over to HBO."

The problem wasn't the subject matter, but the show biz approach. Rivera gets so excited by the sight of his own face on camera that he darn near hyperventilates. You want to put a cold compress on his forehead and make him lie down for a while.

The program's goofiest moment came when Geraldo announced that he was going undercover to do a drug deal himself. The first time, he looked like he was on his way to a casting call for Pirates of Penzance. You had to see this getup to appreciate it. As luck would have it, the drugs turned out to be fake, too.

The next time, Geraldo waited alone in a "plush" Fort Lauderdale hotel, where he posed as a cocaine customer from New York.

(Of all the police departments in the country, leave it to the Broward Sheriffs Office to go along with this nutty scheme. Imagine how they must have explained it to their liability lawyers: "OK, guys, what we thought we'd do is get one of the most recognizable TV journalists in America and let him go into a room to buy a kilo of coke from a bunch of armed criminals, just for fun … ")

So guess what happened. The bad guy recognized Geraldo. And why not, since this time his entire disguise consisted of Brylcreem and a pair of sunglasses. He might as well have worn an ABC blazer and had Barbara Walters on his arm.

Anyway, after a bit of bluster the deal gets done, the cops burst in and Geraldo gets the last laugh. Afterward, a Broward detective chortles at the hapless coke peddler: "You're now the most famous dope dealer in America." Make that the dumbest dope dealer in America.

The apparent message of this little escapade is that any media yahoo can do a drug agent's job, though I'm not too sure. Last week a coke dealer opened fire on three DBA agents in Miami, and I'm kind of sorry Geraldo wasn't there to see how the part is really played.

Maybe Media Vice Cops will become an exciting new weekly series. I'm sure that Nick (Prime-Time) Navarro, the Broward sheriff, would happily sign on as celebrity technical adviser.

Personally, I'd tune in anytime to see Jane Pauley try an undercover drug deal. Granted, it would have to be an unusually perky drug deal, but I bet the Nielsens would be monstrous. Likewise Dan Rather could probably be persuaded to score a dime of black-tar heroin, if he were careful not to get beat up.

Pretty soon they'd all be lined up to take a turn undercover in the fast lane—Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, all the big shots, with the possible exception of Irving R. Levine. I don't think smugglers go for bow ties.

From Michigan, direct to you: drug-free urine March 27, 1987

The job of a U.S. postal carrier grows more perilous every day. A bottle of urine arrived in Wednesday's mail. The package was open; fortunately, the bottle was not.

I don't know whose urine it was, but I know whose it is now.

Mine. I paid for it—-more precisely, the newspaper paid for it. And with all due modesty, I think this little gem belongs in the Expense Account Hall of Fame: "Two ounces of urine—$19.95."

People all over the country are buying other people's urine. The reason is to decoy drug tests, implemented by many companies to identify employees who have recently used marijuana, cocaine or other substances.

As the urinalysis craze grew, it was only a matter of time before somebody cashed in. In recent months several companies have sprung up offering "clean" urine to anyone who wants to pay for it.

The bottle that I ordered came in a brown envelope from a Michigan firm called Insurine Labs, a pioneer in this exciting new field. The urine-by-mail business is going so swimmingly that Insurine's founders say they've expanded the operation.

"It's a growth industry," says business manager Al Robinson. "We started it. We're No. 1. We send out a good product."

Since Consumer Reports has yet to test mail-order urine, and since I wasn't about to attempt any comparisons myself, I had to take Al's word on the quality issue.

"We've got distributors in 33 states," he went on. "We're franchising in Canada. We're in London."

I asked him where the stuff comes from. More to the point, who it comes from. "We've got two labs in California that hire donors," Al said. He described the donors as normal, healthy persons trying to make a little extra money. He said they get $5 a shot, but they don't get paid until the urine sample tests clean.

Each bottle arrives with a piece of paper stating that the urine contains no detectable amounts of amphetamines, barbiturates, methadone, opiates, metabolized cocaine, benzodiazepine or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

And at the bottom of the chart, highlighted (fittingly) in yellow magic marker, is this disclaimer: "THIS PRODUCT IS SOLD AS ADVERTISED AS A SPECIMEN ONLY. INSURINE LABS DOES NOT IMPLY OR SUGGEST THAT IT BE USED IN ANY UNLAWFUL OR IMPROPER MANNER."

I asked Al Robinson what his product might be used for, other than rigging a drug test. "People use it for what they want to use it for," he said. "They can wash their small car with it, you know what I mean?" A second warning on the Insurine urine chart says: "NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHAT SO EVER [sic]."

So Al isn't taking any chances.

At first, he said, he and Insurine founder Meryl Podden considered the urine-selling scheme "a novelty." Originally they sold the samples for $49.95 "and there was no sales resistance at all. None."

The price came down with the competition. After Insurine was mentioned in U.S. News and World Report, orders shot through the roof. Al says the company is doing so well that he and Meryl decided to franchise, so they'd no longer have to do the shipping.

I said this sounded like the ideal set-up, not having to handle the stuff yourself.

Al said there have been no problems, no complaints from unsuspecting postmen. He said the packages must be sturdy to withstand the frigid Michigan winters. Each sample is sent in a clear plastic bottle with a screw top.

"They don't leak," Al added. "And there's no law against it. Nowhere in the country."

Customers who don't intend to use the sample for a drug test might have trouble deciding what else to do with it. As a gift idea it leaves something to be desired, though the bottle itself is attractive enough. A mischievous sort might be tempted to leave it on the cologne counter in a big department store, but of course this would be wrong.

Yacht-pot policy makes zero sense May 11,1988

Sleep well, America. Your borders are safe.

Last Saturday, the Coast Guard cutter Tampa seized a luxury yacht in the Yucatan Channel after a search turned up 1/10th of an ounce of marijuana, scarcely enough to roll a joint.

The capture of the 133-foot Ark Royal was executed under Operation Zero Tolerance, a new policy that encourages the Coast Guard to probe the crannies of private boats. Guardsmen spent the weekend stopping vessels in South Florida; eight have been seized locally, including a shrimp boat carrying a misdemeanor amount of pot.

This isn't Zero Tolerance, it's zero intelligence.

Of all the idiotic ways to waste money and manpower, this is one of the all-time tops. It ranks with the infamous Florida City Roadblock of 1982, when hundreds of cars northbound from the Keys were stopped and randomly searched for drugs and illegal aliens.

The roadblock resulted in only a few seizures, and the State Attorney's Office refused to prosecute because of constitutional questions. Out of pure embarrassment, the debacle was not repeated.

Now comes Zero Tolerance, which permits the confiscation of any vessel carrying even minuscule amounts of drugs. Forget the fundamental questions of guilt or innocence: Who had possession of the stuff? Who carried it on the boat? Did the owner even know?

The ostensible point is to punish recreational drug consumers for their role in the nation's hellish narcotics problem.

On Sunday the Ark Royal was towed to Key West amid much fanfare and many mini-cams. What a blow against the drug cartels: a swank $2.5 million yacht in tow, all because of 1/10th of an ounce of pot!

Before you start cheering, consider this: The Ark Royal's owner was far away in California when his boat was seized. Not a shred of evidence connected him to the teaspoon of marijuana, or to any narcotics involvement. Yet he's the one who had to pay.

The Coast Guard returned the Ark Royal Tuesday, but what of the other Zero Tolerance cases? The U.S. government (meaning taxpayers) will spend a small fortune pursuing the seizures, only to get pounded in court.

The policy is rotten with holes: indiscriminate, inequitable, ineffective. Do charter captains now have to strip-search their customers before heading out for a day of deep-sea fishing? And what about the big cruise liners—why isn't the Coast Guard boarding the S.S. Norway for a cabin-by-cabin shakedown?

Taking Zero Tolerance to its logical extreme, perhaps we'll see a day when the Coasties confiscate one of our own aircraft carriers because some dumb sailor stashed a joint in his bunk. Think of what the U.S.S. Nimitz would bring at public auction!

The very idea of using the Coast Guard for this headline-grabbing nonsense is an insult to the men and women who serve in the agency. If search-and-rescue has been officially replaced by search-and-seizure, then at least let them go for tonnage, not tokers.

All this year we've heard the Coast Guard brass complaining about the $100 million shortfall in the current budget—a deficit that's forcing cutbacks in the agency's interdiction efforts.

But if this is what they wanted the money for, then their budget deserves to be hacked. Give the extra millions to the DEA, or to local police. Shut down some crack houses. Put some real smugglers in jail.

There's no question that casual drug users fuel the underground narcotics economy, but confiscating private boats—whether it's the Ark Royal or a leaky dinghy—won't change a thing. It certainly won't change anyone's mind about using grass or cocaine. That takes education, and education isn't as splashy as a fancy yacht.

Zero Tolerance is a stunt that displays the sinking desperation, and hypocrisy, of the so-called war on drugs. While Reagan's boys secretly negotiate a cushy exit for a dope-dealing tyrant in Panama, the Coast Guard is snooping after ski boats off Crandon Beach.

Drug czar would scare any pusher June 24, 1988

Pablo Escobar and the rest of the South American drug barons are undoubtedly quaking in their Guccis, following the announcement that Florida soon will have a full-time "drug czar."

This promises to be a thrilling mission, at least the way Gov. Bob Martinez describes it.

He promises that the new czar will have broad responsibility for fighting narcotics on all fronts. The governor went so far as to say that the drug czar will have his very own task force, and that this task force will actually have the power to make "recommendations."

I can already hear those lily-livered liberals crying whoa, let's not get carried away! A task force is so … extreme—why not start with a committee, or maybe a small advisory board?

But I say bravo, Governor! Throw down the gauntlet. Take off the gloves. When the going gets tough, the tough make recommendations.

Martinez proposes urine testing for bus drivers and the death penalty for drug kingpins, and he stands the same chance of achieving either one. One of the governor's boldest ideas is to unleash the National Guard to do battle against the cocaine titans. This should certainly liven up those long weekends at the armory.

The governor was not terribly specific about exactly what the National Guard is supposed to do, but this is why you need a drug czar, to nail down the details.

Another important priority of the $6o,ooo-a-year drug czar should be thinking up snazzy code names for investigations.

You've noticed that every major drug bust has a clever-sounding name to go with it—Operation Grouper, Operation Black Tuna, and so on. Unfortunately, after so many years and so many big cases, we're running short of catchy code words. Now you hear things like Operation Dead Flounder, or Zero Tolerance.

We desperately need a drug czar to make sure that all future nicknames sound good on TV and fit neatly into newspaper headlines.

"Czar" itself is a word that newspapers love because it's short, and it has a "z" in it. Headline writers almost never get to use the letter z, so in the months ahead you'll be seeing many news items such as: "Drug Czar Says Crack is Very Bad."

Or: "Czar to Smugglers: Stay Out of Florida!"

One of the czar's most vital jobs will be to call press conferences in order to "put the drug smugglers of the world on notice." This should be done at least twice every year.

One problem facing the new czar is that so many different law enforcement agencies are fighting Florida's drug war, it's hard to know who should get the praise for a big seizure.

To avoid having Customs and DEA and FDLE and the Coast Guard and the FBI and OCB and ATF trample each other dashing for the microphones at press conferences, we need a drug czar who can claim credit for each and every kilogram, and do the speaking for everybody.

We also need someone who knows something about camera angles, so that the contraband can be displayed in a fashion that is dramatic, without being garish.

To show that he means business, Gov. Martinez gave his new task force exactly seven months to come up with its first batch of recommendations. You can bet that Escobar and his pals are marking that time on their calendars, knowing that the clock is finally running out.

Of course, they should be careful not to confuse the Governor's Drug Czar's Task Force with the Vice President's South Florida Task Force, or the Blue Lightning Strike Force, or the Congressional Task Force, or the joint DEA-FBI Task Force, or the Joint Legislative-Executive Task Force, or any of the other nine jillion task forces already deployed in the war on drugs.

The usual cynics have implied that the czar/task force idea is nothing but a naked grab for publicity, but I don't buy it.

Ask any expert and he'll tell you that Gov. Martinez is so right. Winning the war on drugs is easier than any of us dreamed. All we really need is more bureaucracy.

Mason jars won't make roads safer February 17, 1989

Great Moments in Urinalysis (continued):

Now Gov. Bob Martinez has proposed drug-testing for all first-time applicants for a Florida driver license. The screening would cost each driver an extra $30 and would be conducted one month before applying.

Again Bladder-Buster Bob has come up with an idea that commands headlines but defies logic and common sense. Our current driver system is hardly a triumph for public safety. Ask any state trooper about the thousands of licensed motorists who are hopelessly impaired without the influence of narcotics. They are simply inept.

Up at Emission Control, Martinez insists that urine tests for Florida drivers will deter drug use and weed out the serious abusers. Yet in its present form, his plan would do neither.

The flaws reflect either ignorance or naivete by two panels, one an "advisory council" and the other a "task force" assigned by the governor to tackle the drug problem. The gaps in the urine-testing program are bad enough, but the premise is based on a fantasy.

There's not a shred of good evidence—medical, sociological, criminal or otherwise—-that mandatory preannounced drug screening either discourages or prevents abuse. Only a half-wit or a hapless addict is going to get loaded on the day before his urine test—and most users don't fall into either category.

Martinez is correct when he says that driving is a privilege, not a right. But he's daft if he thinks urinalysis of driver applicants is going to make for safer streets—not unless they invent a car with a spectrom-* eter built into the dashboard; a car that won't start until the driver fills a specimen jar.

By far the most lethal drug is alcohol, but I didn't hear the governor explain how his new plan was going to keep drunks off the road. If Martinez is serious, why stop with a urine test? When a driver goes for his license, give him a Breathalyzer, too. It would make about as much as sense as what he's suggesting now.

In fact, the governor's urine screen for drivers is not a drug test so much as an intelligence test. Anybody who couldn't beat it is certainly too stupid to get behind the wheel of a car.

It's so simple. Lay off the coke for a couple days and your specimen will be as pure as a mountain stream. A month later, when you go for your driver license, your nostrils can sparkle like the valleys of Aspen but it won't matter, as long as you can parallel park.

And consider the estimated $30 that each driver will pay to get his urine analyzed. Under the most rigid clinical conditions, urinalysis is never error-free. Imagine the quality of the lab work when the state starts handing out contracts to hacks and phonies looking to cash in on the new gold rush.

The governor's plan to test new drivers means more than a million urine samples a year. At $30 a clip, that adds up to serious money. And in Florida, serious money attracts serious sleaze.

Don't be surprised if the same guys who used to peddle time shares and oil leases suddenly turn up in Tallahassee with white coats and a van full of Mason jars. And don't be surprised if they get a piece of the action.

A most mystifying aspect of Martinez's urine manifesto is that it applies only to first-time applicants for a driver license.

Though the governor exhibits grave concern about our drug-riddled workplaces and neighborhoods, notice that he doesn't suggest urine testing as a condition of license renewal for Florida's current 10 million drivers—which would include, coincidentally, most legislators, Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, not to mention major campaign contributors.

Rather, Martinez's bold new attack on the drug plague focuses on two nefarious groups of would-be motorists—retirees moving to Florida and teenagers just turning 16.

For years lawmen have been scheming for a way to outwit these dope-crazed renegades, and now they've got the break they need.

So you wanna drive, huh? Then line up and tinkle, Gramps.

Cops making crack makes little sense April 26, 1989

"It's sort of like making fudge."

—Lab director of the Broward Sheriffs Office, explaining his recipe for crack cocaine.

So Broward County is manufacturing its own crack. Why not? Nothing better illustrates the misguided, haphazard state of the so-called war on drugs.

Talk about mixed-up priorities. Talk about headline-grabbing. Talk about a Keystone Kops mentality. Naturally you're talking about Nick Navarro, Sheriff Willie Wonka himself.

Of all the goofball stunts he's tried (including his comical TV partnership with Geraldo Rivera), a crack factory is the screwiest of all.

In a seventh-floor lab of the Broward Sheriffs Office, a county chemist cooks up a plate of fresh crack cocaine. The crack is cut into $20 rocks, packaged in tiny plastic baggies and sold on the streets. Sold by cops. When people come up to buy, they get busted.

You might wonder why no other law enforcement agency in the country has tried this clever scheme. There are plenty of reasons, starting with common sense.

The technique by which undercover cops "sell" drugs is known as a reverse sting, tricky enough under the best of circumstances. Typically, police officers posing as drug sellers must display or "flash" a package of real dope to the prospective buyers. Once the deal is made and money changes hands, the cops can make the arrests.

The danger is obvious: rip-offs. The bad guys arrive not with cash, but with guns. The plan is to steal the cocaine and take off. This is what happened when Miami Beach officer Scott Rakow was murdered—a reverse sting gone bad. Years ago, DEA agents nearly lost a truckload of marijuana when a reverse sting turned into a bloody rip-off at a South Dade warehouse.

Suppose a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy trying to sell dope gets robbed, and suddenly some dirtbag is loose on the street, peddling Navarro-brand crack to school kids—crack manufactured by the same people who are supposed to be taking it off the streets.

Why is Broward cooking its own? Officers say they aren't confiscating enough crack to use in big drug stings. Not enough crack? Other urban police departments have no trouble seizing plenty. There's not exactly a shortage of the stuff, especially in South Florida.

Another problem is honesty. The Broward crack lab relies on the assumption that every officer who comes in contact with the cocaine will be straight and pure. In a dream world this might be true, but virtually every local law enforcement agency—from the DEA to the Sweetwater police—has suffered the scandal of drug corruption.

All it takes is one crooked cop and you've got more dope on the streets. Grade-A government dope.

An experienced DEA agent voices a different concern about cops making their own crack: What will happen when these cases go to court? If a fed-up judge trashes the Navarro scheme, it could affect all reverse-sting operations. Such a court decision—over a lousy $20 rock—could cripple many multimillion dollar cocaine investigations.

A second-year law student could have a field day attacking the crack lab: "And where did these drugs come from, Deputy Smith?"

"Uh, we made it ourselves."

"Really? So you manufactured the cocaine. You took it out on the street. You offered it to my client for sale. Yet my client is the one who gets arrested!"

The question that inevitably will be raised in court: By creating the drugs, are the cops creating the crime? Have they crossed the line between enforcement and entrapment? And for what—15 seconds of glory on the local news.

Imagine, in the days of Prohibition, if the government decided to open its own distillery. Brewed up a batch of hooch, bottled it, parked a truck on the streets of Chicago and offered everybody a snoot. You don't think the jails would have overflowed in two hours?

Blockbuster statistics, sure, and big headlines—but absolutely no dent in the problem.

Everybody expects cops to seize dope. Nobody expects them to make the stuff. Just try to convince a South Florida jury that there isn't enough crack out there already.

U.S. murder of drug lords invites chaos June 12, 1989

Your Tax Dollars at Work (continued):

Last week, it was revealed that U.S. authorities are considering the launching of hit squads to assassinate drug kingpins in foreign countries.

A day later, the U.S. Customs Service announced that it had foiled an assassination attempt on the life of Colombian cocaine lord Pablo Escobar Gaviria.

I wish they'd make up their minds. Either it's all right to murder these guys, or it isn't.

In the first case, a couple of fine upstanding South Floridians were arrested on the turnpike with 23 MAC-11s, 18 AR-15 assault rifles, five machine guns and assorted other party favors, recently purchased from a Palm Beach County arms dealer.

The government says the weapons were on their way to Colombia to be used in an elaborate plot to snuff the elusive Mr. Escobar, a leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel. The killing was allegedly ordered by the rival Cali cartel, with whom Escobar has had long-running business disputes.

In announcing the weapons seizure, Customs officials conceded that a larger public service might have been achieved had the assassins been allowed to carry out their mission. However, there are still a few gun laws left in this country, and Customs felt morally compelled to enforce a couple.

In the meantime, U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen (who had called his own press conference to announce the capture of another alleged cocaine gangster) went out of his way to chastise Customs for "leaking" the details of the Escobar escapade. This snippy exchange typifies the sort of selfless commitment and close interagency cooperation that has helped make the drug war the raging success that it is.

The joke of the week, though, belongs to those geniuses at the National Security Council who are now mapping plans to sneak into South America and murder suspected drug leaders. This ought to be a riot.

The idea is that by knocking off a couple of Escobars and Ochoas, we throw the cartels into chaos and disrupt the flow of cocaine. Absolute nonsense—but exactly the sort of James Bond theatrics that would appeal to desperate bureaucrats who don't know any better.

Certainly the cartels are led by evil, violent men, and certainly they have inflicted unfathomable misery on this country, as well as their own. But killing them will achieve nothing except to bring vicious retaliation against U.S. drug agents, diplomats and civilians in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

A man such as Escobar already lives in constant fear of being murdered by his own colleagues. He is protected by armed bodyguards, as well as by crooked cops and soldiers. Assuming a U.S.-backed hit squad could even get to him, it would almost inevitably cost American lives.

And for what? Within days of Escobar's death, there would be a new face at the top of cocaine's corporate ladder. The crops would still grow, the labs would still cook, the planes would still fly.

Look at the infamous Carlos Lender. He was captured, extradited to America, tried, convicted, locked up forever—all without causing even the slightest dip in the supply of cocaine. Shooting him wouldn't have been any more effective. To the cartel, he was totally disposable.

Beyond the practical problems of a U.S. drug assassination are the diplomatic ones. In Bogota, sovereignty remains a passionate cause among lawmakers—if the overnight extradition of Lender caused an uproar, imagine the reaction to the arrival of American killer commandos. Indeed, how would we react if the Colombian president sent undercover assassins to Florida?

William Bennett, the new drug czar, favors U.S. military strikes against foreign "narcoterrorists." If he thinks a hit squad in Medellin is going to solve the crack problem in Washington, he is sadly, pathetically deluded.

To put it in perspective: If Lee Iacocca dropped dead tomorrow, the Chryslers would keep on rolling off the assembly lines. The same holds true for Pablo Escobar and the busy cocaine factories of South America.

Bush fails to pay price of drug war September 5, 1989

The good news is, we've finally got a president who seems to comprehend that cocaine poses a greater threat to this country than communism ever will.

The bad news is, we still don't have a president willing to pay for a real war on drugs.

Most of the $8 billion pledged by George Bush this week was already in the new budget. He asked for about $716 million in additional funds—peanuts, really, if you're seriously talking war.

Amazingly, Bush's budget director, Richard Barman, has suggested most of the new money should come out of social programs: aid to immigrants, grants for juvenile justice programs and subsidies for federal housing projects.

Brilliant thinking, Dick. Of all the places to scrounge for drug-fighting money, pilfer it from those most brutalized by crack: the young, the poor and minorities.

It's not like we don't have the funds for an all-out drug war; the money is there, and in sums greater than you can scarcely imagine. Billions and billions of dollars—$290 billion, as a matter of fact. Easy to find, too, right across the Potomac from the Capitol. Huge building called the Pentagon.

They've got one little program over there called the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as Star Wars—space lasers that are supposed to shield us from a nuclear attack. Lots of top-notch scientists don't think SDI can ever be made to work; others say it will be obsolete by the time it's ready to be implemented, well into the next century.

President Bush wants to spend $4.6 billion on Star Wars in the coming year, an increase of $600 million over the 1988 budget. What would happen if we put this program on hold for 12 months and used that money for the drug war?

Any way you cut it, $4.6 billion represents a substantial commitment. Think of all the prosecutors you could hire, all the prison cells you could build, all the rehab counselors you could train, all the children you could reach through new educational programs.

For the sake of argument, let's say Bush wants to leave Star Wars alone. Let's say a 12-month hiatus would disrupt research and development. Then let's look at another system that's supposedly finished, researched to perfection: the B-2 Stealth bomber.

Despite serious doubts by military experts as to whether this aircraft will be able to fool Soviet radar, the Pentagon wants to build 132 of them at a total price tag of about $70 billion. Each new plane supposedly will cost about $550 million.

Although defense contractors are notorious for underestimating, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. What if you took the money from just 10 new Stealths (say two a year, over the next five years) and applied it to the federal anti-drug budget? That's more than $ i billion a year that we aren't using now.

Given the choice, most Americans would want their tax dollars fighting crime on the streets, not floating around in outer space. There's no clear and present danger to compare with having a crack house on your block.

Money alone isn't going to end the cocaine wars, and many reasonable critics wonder if we haven't already squandered too many billions on a law enforcement strategy that has failed dismally. Yet there are signs that increased funding does make a difference, especially in the classroom. To claim that we simply don't have the money is nonsense; worse than that, it's hypocritical.

The money is there, if Congress and the president can find the courage to use it.

George Bush is smart enough to know that the political stakes have changed since Reagan, Carter and Nixon declared their wars on drugs. Today the streets are so frightening and cocaine crime is so prevalent that American voters are ready to blame somebody if things don't improve—and that somebody is likely to be the president.

Four years isn't enough time to stamp out crack, but it's enough to learn if George Bush means business. Judging by this week's announcement, war is heck.

BSO strikes again in battle of the bulge December 17, 1990

Another true chronicle in America's War on Drugs:

An appeals court has rebuked the Broward Sheriffs Office for permitting female undercover officers to randomly search the crotches of airport travelers.

And you thought the Hare Krishnas were annoying.

For years now, eagle-eyed BSO deputies have been scouting for suspicious trouser bulges on the theory that drug smugglers often hide the booty between their legs. When a likely lump is located, the suspect is pulled aside and an official grope is conducted.

That's what happened to one Anthony Lewis Tognaci in 1987 while he waited for a USAir flight at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Unknown to Tognaci, the dimensions of his groin had caught the eye of BSO Lt.Vicki Cutcliffe.

According to court records, Cutcliffe approached Tognaci after noticing an unusual prominence in his pants. Tognaci consented to a search, and while patting him down Cutcliffe felt something "crinkly" located "a little bit higher than where his male organs would be, normally"

The possibilities seemed limited.

The young man was taken away and strip-searched. Police found 112 grams of cocaine, and charged Tognaci with drug trafficking. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 3 '/> years.

He appealed the case, arguing that Lt. Cutcliffe's search "exceeded its scope." In a ruling handed down last week, the Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld Tognaci's conviction, saying "it is not clear from the evidence that the officer actually touched appellant's genitals."

However, the court expressed serious concerns about the BSO's crotch patrol, because travelers who consent to being searched aren't informed that it will focus on "this most private area of the body."

The judges also questioned the value of such methods in drug enforcement. They cited Lt. Cutcliffe's testimony that she had searched "hundreds of men's crotches without discovering any contraband."

Said the court: "We emphasize that these encounters are random, not generated by any articulable suspicion of wrongdoing, not by a drug courier profile, nor by a fear of the officer's safety."

Rather, the searches are motivated only by the contour of a suspect's pants. Sternly the judges added: "And at least based upon the hundreds of searches which not do not produce any drugs, we conclude from the testimony that the genital search is not a very effective investigative tool [the court's word, not mine] … "

For her part, Lt. Cutcliffe doesn't seem to mind below-the-belt surveillance. She said it's easier for her to do it because most male deputies are reluctant to search a male suspect so intimately.

Nonsmugglers seldom complain—flattered, perhaps, that the natural topography of their trousers made someone think they were carrying something extra.

Still, problems extend beyond the appellate court's Fourth Amendment concerns. Now that the BSO strategy has been publicized, lots of very lonely guys are probably heading for the Fort Lauderdale airport in the hopes of being frisked, and frisked slowly, by Lt. Cutcliffe.

Then there's the more delicate public-relations challenge. Some tourists who come to South Florida might not wish to be groped as they disembark. Should we warn them to wear baggy pants? To avoid crinkly underwear? To carry their cellular phones in a back pocket?

It's an unusual welcome, that's for sure. When you get off the plane in Hawaii, you get a lei around your neck. Here in Florida you get a hand on your zipper.

In spite of the court's warning, Sheriff Nick Navarro has announced no plans to terminate the crotch patrol. So if you're passing through the airport, don't be shocked if a female cop stops you and whispers: "Is that a kilo in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?"