A WAR AGAINST OURSELVES

BOSTON -- "They are killing us," the pilot of the small plane carrying an
American missionary family said as a Peruvian Air Force fighter fired.
Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, died. But the "they"
in the pilot's words were not just the Peruvian gunners, and the "us" were
not only Veronica and Charity Bowers. The ultimate cause of their death was
U.S. drug policy, the war on drugs; and that war has damaged the lives of
millions of Americans. The attack on the Bowers family focused attention on
an obscure part of the drug war: surveillance flights by C.I.A. contract
employees who target suspected drug-smuggling planes for the Peruvian Air
Force. President Bush ordered a temporary suspension of the program.

And critics pointed to flaws in the way it is carried out. For example, the
C.I.A. employees who spotted the Bowers's plane tried to stop the Peruvian
fighter from shooting at it before first checking its markings. But a tape
of their communications showed that the Peruvian crew had trouble
understanding them because the C.I.A. men spoke little Spanish. A former
pilot in the C.I.A. operation told The Washington Post, "That's one of the
fallacies of the whole program: the language barrier." But the real point
is not a particular flaw like the C.I.A.'s idiocy in using English-speaking
spotters.

It is the futility of the whole operation. The effort to stop cocaine
exports from Peru has cut the flow from there substantially. But that
reduction has been more than made up by a huge increase in coca cultivation
and production in Colombia. As Plan Colombia, the military anti-drug
program, gets under way there, production is reportedly beginning to shift
to Ecuador. In the last 15 years, the United States has spent $30 billion,
most of it in Latin America, trying to cut the supply of drugs from abroad.

The costs to other societies have been severe: the rise of drug gangs, the
suffering of peasants from crop eradication, the corruption of governments.
Yet the amount of cocaine and heroin entering the United States is as great
as ever. To think that we can deal with our drug problem by limiting supply
is irrational. Illegal drugs are an infinitesimal portion of goods entering
this country, easy to conceal.

And if cocaine were magically stopped, Americans who crave drugs would find
some other chemical. The real need is to reduce the craving.

Study after study has shown that treatment of drug abusers is the best and
cheapest way to do that. Yet treatment funds are scarce, and the heavy
emphasis of our drug policy is on criminal punishment. The costs to our
society have been grievous.

Long mandatory minimum sentences have filled our prisons with nonviolent
drug offenders and made them, and their families, damaged beings for the
rest of their lives.

Prison-building is now one of the country's largest construction programs.
The war on drugs is a testament to the human capacity for self-delusion. It
is hard to change because even legislators who recognize its futility do
not want to be seen as "soft on drugs." Yet around the country some
politicians, and many members of the public, have begun to call for change.
But not George W. Bush and his administration. Mr. Bush's reported choice
as drug czar is John P. Walters, an all-out warrior who has spoken
scornfully of drug treatment and wants to intensify the fight to cut off
drug supplies abroad. The Bush administration has also started to enforce a
little-known 1998 law that bars financial aid to students who have been
convicted of even a minor drug offense.

The result, defying reason, is to discourage one of the best routes to
rehabilitation, higher education. The "war on drugs" is more than just a
slogan.

In war, collateral damage is often regarded as unavoidable. In any sane
civilian policy, the collateral damage of the drug war to ourselves and our
neighbors would long since have been found unacceptable. The result of the
U.S. drug war, The Economist of London said last week, "is to undermine
democracy, human rights and the environment in much of Latin America. A
radical rethink of drug policy is long overdue."