HOUSE AFIRE

Imagine a house on fire and firefighters throwing gasoline on it in the
hope of extinguishing it. The United States does just that in Colombia with
its more than $1.3 billion in support for Plan Colombia.

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, "political
violence has markedly increased since the first installment of the United
States' $1.3 billion Plan Colombia aid package was dispersed in August.
There were at least 27 massacres in the month of January alone claiming the
lives of as many as 300 civilians.

Today, U.S. supplied helicopters using U.S. tax dollars are spraying
Round-Up on subsistence crops such as corn and bananas in southern
Colombia. Soon there will be widespread hunger in the states of Putumayo
and Caqueta. All of this is done in order to destroy coca production.

The rationale given to the U.S. public for the more than $1 billion for
Plan Colombia is that this is part of the "War on Drugs." And yet, decades
of scientific evidence have shown that source-country eradication efforts
have no significant effect on drug use in the United States. A recent Rand
Corporation study suggests that drug treatment is 23 times more cost
effective in fighting drugs than aerial spraying on coca in source countries.

This conflict cannot be won militarily. Let us not take 10 years and
thousands of deaths to figure this out.

William McP. Bigelow

Mount Desert