Americana: Pot's Big Payoff

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They go aloft in spiffy Cessna 310s and cruise the highways in Cadillacs and Lincolns. In bays and harbors, they make waves with rakish speedboats and cabin cruisers. They are Florida's modestly paid drug agents; yet their planes, cars and boats are among the best that money can buy—certainly better than the usual Government issue. For good reason. The expensive equipment once belonged to the smugglers themselves.

By law in Florida, which is the biggest entry point for illegal narcotics from South America, agents must take possession of all transport seized in drug busts. The officers may, in many cases, keep the vehicles for their own official use, or sell them to help pay their expenses. All together, sheriffs' departments have seized at least $6 million in property since 1976. U.S. customs officials alone last year claimed 81 airplanes, 191 boats and 211 land vehicles.

But even as the lawmen upgrade their equipment, courtesy of the smugglers, they find themselves losing out in the war of technology. Drug runners are using ever faster ships, and planes; four-engine Constellations, for example, are replacing some twin-engine planes. And some law enforcement officials in Florida frankly admit that they probably stop only one-tenth of the drug traffic, which means that shipments worth upwards of $3 billion a year are getting through.