THIS DRUGS WAR IS JUST LIKE VIETNAM

The United States Is Bogged Down In An Unwinnable Contest

The United States is staging a new offensive in the drugs war, most
forcefully on the public relations front. In Bolivia, we are assured, the
production of coca - the plant which is the basis of cocaine - has almost
been eradicated after a three-year US-backed campaign.

In Colombia, an aerial spraying campaign in the coca-growing heartland of
western Putamayo has reportedly destroyed thousands of acres of crops.
Colombian officials are describing the operation as a resounding success".
Two senators have just returned, praising the Colombian military's
financial probity and commitment to human rights - a combination of remarks
that just happens to send my personal Geiger counter, which records
bullshit quotient in news reports, completely off the clock.

The word Vietnam" still haunts policy-making in Washington, and President
Bush has refused to sink further manpower into Colombia. But if you take
the drugs war as a whole, the similarities are overwhelming. With the very
best of intentions, Washington has committed vast quantities of resources
to an unwinnable contest against a far more committed, hydra-headed enemy.
And as in Vietnam, many of those resources seem devoted to kidding
themselves, visiting senators and the public about operational successes.

A lot of the participants were stoned out of their brains in Vietnam too.
But that war got stopped because the sons of America's suburbs started
being killed and wounded in large numbers. In this war, those suffering
most directly are the disempowered and voiceless: South American peasants;
low-grade suppliers who get caught and jailed; addicts who end up being
driven further into dependency.

It is a low-level conflict that suits pretty well everyone else:
politicians who like to pretend they are taking action; recipients of their
largesse who make fat livings out of the funding; the titans of the
recreational drug industry who make vast and almost risk-free profits; and
most of their customers, who have enjoyed a plentiful supply for decades.

Almost every action in this war has the reverse effect to what was
intended. Donnie Marshall, of the US drug enforcement administration,
admitted to Congress last week that the strikes against coca meant that
Colombia has suspended attacks on poppy plantations, so its heroin exports
have increased. Cocaine use has been dropping in the US, as the nasty
effects of crack have become better known; heroin increase, however, has
doubled in five years.

The Guardian reported last month that the planes were indeed successfully
spraying coca crops; they were also spraying fruit trees, maize plants and
schoolchildren, who were suffering from rashes, headaches and vomiting. The
promised aid to the peasants had of course not arrived. A Washington Post
reporter noted a week ago that on almost every farm hit by the herbicide,
young coca plants were now in evidence. In Bolivia, where victory is being
proclaimed, less than half the families (a UN estimate) have received
assistance in planting alternative crops and most of these crops are
failing. It makes British farm policy looks sensible.

There are tiny scraps of evidence that the US is starting to wake up to its
folly. In its Hollywoodish kind of way, the successful film Traffic has at
least made the subject topical. A new administration, in which an urge to
cut costs is vying with a dictatorial nature, is showing the odd smidgin of
interest.

The New York-based Drug Policy Foundation says that 500,000 Americans are
now behind bars on drugs charges, compared with 50,000 in 1980. (Of course,
most are black so what the heck?) The drugs war cost the US more than
Dollars 40bn last year, according to the foundation: Yet illegal drugs are
cheaper, purer and more readily available than ever before." Footling with
the supply chain of this brilliantly successful free market, with
occasional prissy lectures to children, has solved absolutely nothing.

In Britain, the debate is still bogged down on the minor question of
legalising cannabis. We desperately need someone to understand the bigger
picture: that legalising, controlling, restricting, taxing and
de-glamourising recreational drugs offers massive prizes by breaking the
power of the cartels and gangs, emptying the jails and - if handled
properly - cutting usage as well.

The crimes of about 70% of Britain's prisoners are in some way related to
drugs. There's no chance of sense from the present government, petrified of
both the White House and the Daily Mail. There's even less hope from Hague
and Widdecombe (the Smith Square cartel). Miss Widdecombe is even now
probably working on plans to outlaw sex and rock n' roll as well. But is it
remotely possible that a chastened post-election Conservative party,
searching for a big idea, might actually hit upon a good one?