
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 18, 1993                   TAG: 9404220012
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

LAW ENFORCEMENT has never been able to keep ahead, technology-wise, of drug dealers. With their ill-gotten resources, criminals can match every new advance. So it was inevitable that someone in government would finally come up with the ingeniously innovative response - to go retrograde.

Some police departments have found they can drive drug dealers out of neighborhoods by installing old-time pay phones on the streets. It seems the old rotary-dial phones discourage drug dealers because, without newfangled pulse-tone dialing, they can't be used to access the beepers of colleagues in local drug-trafficking networks. Now, if authorities would also install voice mail, asking drug dealers to leave their names and phone numbers, that might really help law enforcement.

THE BALD eagle has made enough of a comeback, federal officials reported last week, that it soon will be moved from the endangered-species list to the less critical threatened-species list. It's welcome news.

But in a sense, it was an easy victory. As a well-known animal and a national symbol fraught with emotional overtones, the bald eagle received an extraordinary portion of species-protection resources. Now-banned DDT, rather than habitat destruction, was the biggest threat to the bird's survival.

Struggles remain, to find ways to protect less prominent species while striking a good balance with human economic interests.

by CNB