THE OTHER LOSING WAR

Kingston, Jamaica - Preoccupation with Iraq has drawn attention from
another unwinnable American war that has been far more destructive of
life both at home and abroad and has caused far greater collateral
damage in other countries, in addition to spreading contempt for
American foreign engagements. This is the failed war on drugs.

It was Nixon who, in 1971, first declared war on drugs. As with Iraq,
the strategy is flawed in its conception and execution, made worse by
a refusal to change course in the face of failure. It strongly
emphasizes eradicating the source of drugs, interdiction of traffic
and draconian punishment for offenders. It neglects what nearly every
expert believes -- and European experience has shown -- to be the
only successful strategy: a demand-side emphasis on preventive
programs and rehabilitation of addicts. The present administration's
claims of a shift to preventive measures is belied by the budget of
its drug control office, which allocates a 94 percent share to
disrupting the supply, mainly through environmentally hazardous
spraying in Latin America and the Caribbean that alienates local farmers.

The domestic results are tragic: an enormous increase in the
incarceration of young, disproportionately minority Americans,
resulting in the waste of human resources and the creation of a
prison culture that converts nonviolent addicts into hardened
criminals, without any impact on drug use. Within a year of release,
43.5 percent of drug offenders are rearrested. Recent surveys
indicate a steady increase in the use of illicit drugs: more than 40
percent of Americans over 12 have used them at some point. Nearly all
Caribbean societies are involved with narcotrafficking and, in the
case of Jamaica, large-scale production and export of marijuana. In
2001, illicit drug shipments in the region were worth more money than
the top five legitimate exports combined. The results have been
devastating. Political corruption and payment in arms threatens the
sovereignty and stability of many states. In 1985, the chief minister
and minister of commerce of the Turks and Caicos Islands were
arrested in Miami and imprisoned in America for drug offenses.

Drug addiction and violent crime are now endemic in Jamaica, Puerto
Rico and even small islands like St. Kitts. The corruption of the
police and other security forces has reached a crisis point in
Jamaica, where an officer can earn the equivalent of half a year's
salary by simply looking the other way. Last year, 1,300 people were
murdered here, in a population of only three million -- and that was
an improvement on the previous year.

Dr. Peter Phillips, Jamaica's very competent minister of national
security, estimates that 60 percent of the murders are drug related.
Calling cocaine trafficking and use the "taproot" of a "web of
criminality," he said drugs sustain a "self-perpetuating culture of
extreme violence" extending to many areas of the society.

The drug culture is highly transnational and organized, exemplified
by the Jamaican "posses" that terrorized America in the 1980s with
some 4,900 murders. Traffickers increasingly operate offshore, taking
advantage of better arms, faster boats and more efficient tracking
equipment than those available to local security forces.

Phillips is puzzled by America's inflexible emphasis on eradication
and interdiction and its refusal to provide help where it is most
needed, like the rebuilding of corrupted police forces. He provided a
telling example of the futility of current approaches. With Americans
and Jamaicans working closely together recently, the percentage of
transshipments of Colombian cocaine to the U.S. that went through
Jamaica was reduced from 20 to 2. But this had no effect on the
amount of cocaine entering America -- the traffickers simply changed
routes -- and it increased violent crime in Jamaica. Drug dons became
more murderous in turf wars, as there was less cocaine and money to go around.

America's unwillingness to recognize the socioeconomic context of the
drug crisis at home and abroad, to see that being surrounded by
failing states threatens its security, to provide aid where it is
most effective, and to acknowledge that the root cause of this
hemispheric disaster is not supply but its own citizens' insatiable
demand for illicit drugs, is as incomprehensible as the quagmire in Iraq.