PLAN COLOMBIA: LATEST U.S. DRUG WAR FAILURE

Special to The Wichita Eagle

The centerpiece of the Bush administration's "supply side" campaign against
illegal drugs is staunch support for the Colombian government's Plan
Colombia. But the facts show that the plan is a waste of time and money.

Washington is backing Plan Colombia to the tune of $1.3 billion, primarily
in military aid. Green Beret personnel are training several antidrug
battalions, U.S. funds have helped the Colombian military buy Black Hawk
helicopters and other hardware, and employees under contract to the State
Department fly dangerous aerial spraying missions to eradicate drug crops.

Plan Colombia's goals are certainly ambitious. Since December, more than
75,000 acres of drug crops have been sprayed with a herbicide. U.S.
satellite data suggest that there are about 340,000 acres of coca (the raw
material for cocaine) under cultivation throughout the country. Colombian
officials express the hope that the eradication campaign will cut that
acreage at least 50 percent by 2002.

But evidence has recently emerged that Plan Colombia's claims of success
are erroneous -- or at least irrelevant. Even as President Andres Pastrana
and other leaders boasted of the plan's achievements, reports were leaking
out that a new study, funded by the United Nations, indicated that there
were more than 340,000 acres under cultivation.

Even more to the point, previous U.S. estimates of total cocaine production
in Colombia -- 580 tons annually, out of total world production of 780 tons
- -- were too low. The new study concluded that Colombia's actual cocaine
production was between 800 and 900 tons per year.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration inadvertently provides additional
evidence of Plan Colombia's futility. Donnie Marshall, chief of the DEA,
recently conceded that street prices of cocaine in the United States have
remained virtually the same since Colombia's vigorous crop-eradication
measures began. Yet if those efforts were successful, they should have
produced a sharp decline in cocaine exports. That development, in turn,
should be driving up street prices to reflect increasing scarcity.

The fact that not even a modest price spike has occurred clearly indicates
that Plan Colombia is having no meaningful impact on the supply of cocaine.

The brutal reality is that, as long as drugs are illegal, there will be a
huge black-market premium -- a lucrative potential profit that will attract
producers. Plan Colombia cannot repeal the economic laws of supply and
demand. In attempting to do so, the United States is creating even more
trouble for an already troubled neighbor.