Operation Sudden Fall suddenly fell on 75 San Diego State University students arrested last week on drug-related charges.

Investigation into drug sales on campus revealed such widespread trafficking that campus police called in the Drug Enforcement Administration after the death of a student caused by cocaine and ethanol intoxication.

Undercover work centered on campus fraternities, and what they found doesn't seem like a small-scale drug operation: 50 pounds of marijuana, four pounds of cocaine, 48 marijuana plants, 350 Ecstasy pills, a shotgun, three semi-automatic handguns, and $60,000 in cash.

One of those arrested was a 36-year-old gang member from Pomona with ties to Mexican drug cartels.

Ironically, one SDSU student would have earned a master's degree in homeland security this month, and another was a criminal-justice major. How did they plan on passing job-related polygraph tests? Years from now, those arrested may discount their involvement in campus drug dealing as being young and naive or that they were just trying to supplement their minimum wage jobs.

Such was the explanation given recently by captured fugitive Susan LeFevre, aka Marie Walsh.

She made headlines as the Carmel Valley mother of three whose drug-dealing past caught up with her. She said she got into drugs after the death of her boyfriend in Vietnam many years ago.

She sold Mexican heroin, a hard-core drug for a 20-year-old high school graduate. The Michigan Department of Corrections claimed LeFevre earned $2,000 a week as the leader of a heroin drug ring.

She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. After a few months in prison, she hopped the barbed-wire fence and disappeared.

Thirty-two years later, she is a respectable wife and mother. Should her new life absolve her drug conviction and prison break? Will race play a factor? The courts in Michigan will have to decide.

Meanwhile, back at SDSU, parents are trying to understand the lure of selling and distributing drugs that profit drug lords in Mexico. The lure, obviously, was the money and the ringleaders certainly were businessmen.

One entrepreneur didn't want to lose customers while out of town, so he sent text messages offering discounts to those who ordered early. Another offered free delivery from the front seat of his father's Lexus.

As a society, what else can we do that we haven't already done to educate our youth on the lifelong ramifications of drug use and drug trade?

We place programs in the schools and declare a War on Drugs. We sponsor anti-drug television commercials and magazine ads. We lecture our children, as I'm sure LeFevre did, and punish the guilty. We reach many, but not all.

LeFevre will become the latest "get" for talk shows and interviews. She will probably write a book and ultimately profit from her drug past. The students will go to court and soon learn their fate. In a blink of the eye, all that they worked toward could vanish.

And the drug lords in Mexico will keep counting their money.

Carmel Valley resident Gail Chatfield is a freelance columnist.