DENVERITE: DRUG WAR A FAILURE

Oct. 26, 2000 - Message from Toni Riley in Globeville to Mexico's
government and the White House: "Get a clue."

She said the $19.7 billion U.S. war on illegal drugs isn't stopping
dealers of cocaine, crack and heroin in her low-income north Denver
neighborhood.

"I hate it," said Riley, 53, who helps shelter kids after school in a
community center.

From her own investigations after three decades in the neighborhood,
Riley said, 99 percent of the drugs today come through Mexico. The
problem, she said, is that Mexican police are paid so poorly that they
solicit bribes to get by. Her solution:

"Pay Mexican cops to be straight. Then they'll be straight."

Mexico's ambassador to the United States, visiting Colorado on
Wednesday, and White House drug strategy officials acknowledged
Riley's concerns.

They insist the drug war is working.

Mexican seizures of 25 tons of drugs last year show an "unparalleled"
commitment to help the United States fight drugs, Ambassador Jesus
Reyes-Heroles said in a Denver Post interview.

The problem is that Mexican city governments "don't have the finances"
to pay police sufficiently. Only the new federal police are paid
enough to live, Heroles said. And Mexico needs "a public sanction on
corruption." But the corruption problem is so entrenched that Mexico
will concentrate instead on stopping U.S.-bound drugs as they enter
Mexico from Colombia, he said.

"We have to keep the cocaine from getting into Mexico, because once it
gets into Mexico, the damage is done."

At the same time, Heroles suggested, U.S. officials ought to refocus
their drug war by "spending more on the treatment of drug addiction as
an illness."

Heroles addressed drug control concerns between speeches to World
Affairs Council audiences in Colorado Springs and Denver. He predicted
continued economic growth under Mexico's incoming President Vicente
Fox, and a greater role by Mexico's politically divided congress in
policy toward the United States.

White House officials also defended the drug war. More than half of
illegal drugs entering the United States may come through Mexico, said
Bob Weiner, spokesman for U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey. Mexico
contests that figure. But Mexico is doing the best it can, Weiner
said. "Mexico has eradicated more drugs than any nation on the face of
the earth," he said.

Mexican officials "have to do better still" in screening police
officers for corruption, he said. Although U.S. spending on illegal
drugs tops $62 billion a year, he said teen drug abuse "is going down,
by 21 percent over the last two years." Cocaine use, he said,
decreased by 70 percent since 1985.

In her red-brick community center at 4400 Lincoln St. across from an
elementary school, Riley said the White House numbers just don't jibe
with what she sees on Globeville streets.

"Where are they looking?" She recalled gazing out a McDonald's window
with her two grandchildren as men approached cars, making drug deals
in a parking lot.

Interstates 70 and 25, bordering Globeville, give vehicles easy access
for quick drop-offs.

And the 35 or so children at her center each afternoon have told
supervisors about drug use they've encountered in and around their
homes.

Riley said she tries to work with police in approaching people
involved in drug dealing.

Now she wants some help from the White House and Mexico, she said. And
verbal assurances that conditions are improving aren't enough.

"The only way you can prove it to me,"

Riley said, "is when the drugs don't exist on the street."