Letters

Re “Tracking smugglers, the old-fashioned way,” Column One, May 12

Accounts of Border Patrol agents pretending to be Daniel Boone on a bear hunt convince me that their efforts to interdict drugs are a complete waste of time.

The agents in the article brag about stopping $30 million in drugs, but it is well known that the drug cartels are moving many times that amount into the United States every year.

It’s time to end an expensive, counter- productive game that benefits drug cartels more than anyone else.

Ralph Givens

Daly City

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I really enjoyed your coverage of the Border Patrol agents in southern New Mexico. Having recently traveled the backcountry in that area, I can relate to the challenges they face. Southern Arizona and New Mexico are full of Border Patrol vehicles with elevating towers. Yet despite the increase in manpower, equipment and general funding, the drugs keep coming. Short of building the “great wall of America,” I am not sure what we can do.

And we cannot confuse “border sovereignty” with “immigration policy.” The two are unrelated. Some folks think that non-enforcement of border sovereignty constitutes a de facto immigration policy. At some level that is true, but it really cannot be that way anymore. Your story highlights the real reason for enforcement.

Bill Caid

San Diego

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What a waste of time, money, gasoline and manpower it is to have Border Patrol agents traipsing across the desert, working in 24-hour overlapping shifts, sometimes driving hundreds of miles in their SUVs to track marijuana smugglers -- who can outsmart it all.

It is time to legalize marijuana, tax it and put an end to this ridiculous war on drugs.

Jean Holt Koch

Los Angeles