THE FBI BOWS OUT

THE attacks of Sept. 11 are changing the way the federal government is
waging the war on drugs. That may turn out to be a good thing.

Up to now, the federal approach has been to throw lots of money and
manpower at the problem, giving as much priority to busting small-time
crack dealers as to nabbing a kingpin for shipping a ton of cocaine.
But the war on terror has prompted the federal government to review
this shotgun approach. The FBI announced on Tuesday that it would
concentrate on the war on terror and leave the war on drugs to the
Drug Enforcement Administration.

Attorney General John Ashcroft says the new focus of the drug war
would be on a "most wanted list" of 54 drug organizations here and
abroad. Good luck. Remember Pablo Escobar? Authorities once assured us
that wiping him out was the key to vanquishing the drug business in
Colombia. No sooner had Escobar's death been announced in 1993 than
authorities found themselves waging war against an equally formidable
successor -- the Cali cartel. It's wishful thinking to assume the drug
problem will vanish once the most wanted are captured.

As an ABC-TV documentary last week pointed out, the United States is
spending more and more and getting fewer good results: The budget for
the drug war has increased nearly 50 percent in 10 years, but the
number of drug users hasn't changed much. One example of this wasteful
approach is Plan Colombia, a $1.7 billion anti-drug offensive in which
U.S.-supplied helicopters and U.S.-trained soldiers protect
crop-dusting planes that spray coca fields with herbicide. This
program succeeded in shifting some drug traffic from La Hormiga, once
the center of Colombia's cocaine heartland. But it failed to stop the
flow of drugs into the United States. In fact, the Bush administration
concedes that the number of acres planted in coca has increased.

The government might have gotten a better return on its $1.7 billion
by focusing on drug education and treatment to help Americans kick
their nasty habits. If the DEA is going to be the lead anti-drug
agency with the FBI otherwise occupied, it should devote its resources
to kingpins and not waste time on street-corner stings that yield a
few joints or a few rocks of crack.