DEAL WITH DRUGS AT HOME

Re: Plan Colombia gets off to rocky start, Feb. 11.

The story by your Latin America correspondent, David Adams, illustrated the
huge problem that mass aerial chemical spraying creates,for a population,
namely, the inability to control the spray. Wind blows it in varying,
difficult-to-predict directions, contaminating areas other than the coca
fields our pilots wish to kill.

Colombia is the main supplier of our cocaine, which is derived from the coca
plants its farmers grow. However, killing all forms of vegetation over
thousands of acres to get at coca fields that cover a fraction of that
territory is kind of like dynamiting one's front yard to get rid of the fire
ants - it'll kill 'em, along with the whole lawn!

And what about the people who live in the towns and on the farms around
these coca fields? Should we just expose them to aerial pesticide willy may?
Do we really know the long-range health effects involved?

I believe we should deal with our cocaine addiction and abuse problem here
in the United States. We should not tromp off to another country with
$1.3-billion worth of our taxpayers' money - the bulk of it military aid -
endangering the health of its citizens and killing good crops and endangered
rain forest to get at the coca fields. After all, the coca growers will just
go to another country and start over, just as they abandoned Bolivia and
Peru in the past when the pressure was on.