Border Crackdown on Drugs Launched : Crime: Plan calls for transferring agents to area, inspecting more vehicles at crossings and using U.S. helicopters to ferry Mexican police.

Responding to criticism of a federal agency’s border inspection procedures, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy announced an initiative Saturday aimed at reducing drug smuggling along the Southwest border.

Lee Brown was accompanied on his visit to the border by Customs Service Commissioner George Weise, who said inspectors will immediately intensify inspections of cars coming into the United States from Mexico as part of Operation Hard Line.

“We will continue to attack the organizations and the traffickers who export poison to our communities and to our children,” Brown said at a news conference less than 40 yards from Tijuana.

Customs officials also propose using U.S. Blackhawk helicopters to ferry Mexican police to drug-loading sites in Mexico to arrest traffickers and seize narcotics.

Often, Weise said, Mexican authorities cannot get to the traffickers before the narcotics are loaded onto trucks for land passage to the United States. But Weise conceded that the United States does not have any assurances that Mexico wants to participate.

“We have had discussions with the Mexican government,” he said. “This is a concept which is being explored. We do not yet have a full commitment from the Mexican government, but we have had a positive response to the concept.”

Ricardo Ramirez, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, said after the announcement: “We don’t know much about it yet. I don’t know what the Mexican government’s response will be. But I do know we are interested in interrupting the flow of drug traffic.”

Brown and Weise visited the border in response to concerns about drug trafficking and relaxed customs inspection procedures that critics say have allowed traffickers to smuggle their illicit products into the United States.

“We also intend to open trucks and inspect more vehicles,” Weise said.

In fiscal 1994, agents seized 1,765 pounds of cocaine from commercial traffic, primarily large semitrailers. That compares to 7,708 pounds in fiscal 1993, according to Customs Service records.

Some have blamed the decline on Line Release, a federal program to allow approved companies to transport hundreds of shipments across the border without intensive inspection.

The initiative will transfer up to 80 customs inspectors to the 2,000-mile-long Southwest border.

The initiative also calls for installing automatic tire deflators at border checkpoints to deter “port running,” in which a drug smuggler tries to plow through a border crossing without stopping. Port running increased from 260 cases in 1993 to 795 in 1994.

Brown says the federal government plans to infuse the border region with up to $15 million. At least $8 million will go to fight drug trafficking along the California border in San Diego and Imperial counties.