PLAN COLOMBIA

U.S. Continues An Unwinnable Strategy In Drug War

Amid the rain forests of southern Colombia, U.S.-funded planes are
spraying herbicides on coca plants in a costly and futile attempt to
wipe out cocaine supplies.

Aerial fumigation, part of a $1.3-billion U.S. contribution to the Plan
Colombia program, is drawing fire from human rights and environmental
groups. Along with the coca plants, herbicide spraying has killed the
subsistence crops of indigenous farmers. And it has damaged the region's
rain forests in the ecologically rich Amazon basin.

Unfortunately, the drug kingpins, who distribute billions of dollars
worth of their product, aren't taking a hit. Spraying has been used for
more than a decade without reducing the cultivation of coca. It has
simply bumped supply sources around Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.

To its credit, the Bush administration wants to put more into
development aid, but it remains committed to Plan Colombia and to a
drug-fighting strategy that will not enable impoverished farmers to give
up coca as a cash crop.

In truth, no eradication program will succeed as long as billions of
dollars are made feeding the demand for illegal drugs in the United
States. Treating addicts is a far more effective -- and cheaper -- way
to reduce illegal drugs entering the United States, but underfunded
treatment centers must turn addicts away.

Bush should ditch Plan Colombia and cut off supplemental funding for
fumigation that, along with other military aid, links the U.S.
government to human rights abuses by the Colombian Army.

The signs aren't good. Bush's new drug czar, John Walters, has advocated
expensive military action against drug-producing countries and been
almost hostile to drug-treatment programs. That means the war on drugs
likely will remain what it has been: costly and unwinnable.