DRUG-WAR ADVOCATES MISTAKE FREE MARKET

South Kingstown resident Martin Leprowski is to be commended for his
noble efforts to raise awareness of the drug war's tremendous
collateral damage in South America. The U.S.-backed Plan Colombia
could very well spread both coca production and civil war throughout
the region. Communist guerilla movements do not originate in a vacuum.

U.S. tax dollars would be better spent addressing the socio-economic
causes of civil strife than applying overwhelming military force to
the symptoms. We're not doing the Colombian people any favors by
funding civil war. Nor are Americans being protected from drugs.
Destroy the Colombian coca crop and production will boom in Peru,
Bolivia and Ecuador.

Destroy every last plant in South America and domestic methamphetamine
production will increase to meet the demand for cocaine-like drugs.
The self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are
seemingly incapable of applying basic economics to drug policy.

Rather than waste resources attempting to overcome immutable laws of
supply and demand, policymakers should look to the lessons of our
disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition. "Tough" drug laws fuel
organized crime and violence, which is then used to justify increased
drug-war spending.

A Bush administration proposal to add $676 million in South American
counternarcotics aid to the Clinton administration's $1.3 billion Plan
Colombia is a prime example of big government throwing good money
after bad. A crackdown in one region will only lead to increased
cultivation elsewhere.

When faced with the choice of abject poverty and the inflated black-
market profits of illicit crops, many farmers will choose the latter.
Creating a global welfare state in which every developing country is
paid not to grow illicit crops is a rather expensive
proposition.

ROBERT SHARPE, M.P.A.

Washington, D.C.

The writer is program officer for the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation