DEATHS IN PERU SYMBOLIZE DANGER, FUTILITY OF DRUG WAR

The Bush administration acted quickly to freeze anti-drug surveillance
flights in Peru as a result of the deaths last week of a missionary and her
baby daughter in a mistaken shoot-down of their plane. That's OK as far as
it goes, but President Bush should have taken the opportunity to ask for a
broad review of the longtime Washington policy of assisting drug
interdiction in foreign countries.

That policy is dangerous, expensive and, worse, ultimately misses the target.

U.S. officials, trying to justify U.S. involvement in the Peruvian
shoot-down incident, have said the cooperation between the United States
and Peru in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy has been successful in
cutting back the production of cocaine in Peru dramatically. But can anyone
point to data that shows that shooting down planes over Peru has done
anything to stop even one addict in this country from using drugs?

There will never be enough money, equipment or "cooperation" with foreign
governments to prevent desperately poor subsistence farmers --- from
Afghanistan to Peru --- from growing plants that are lucrative cash crops
because they can be processed into the illegal narcotics that are in huge
demand in the United States. Nor will there ever be enough U.S. pressure to
ferret out all the corrupt law enforcement agents abroad who accept
American anti-drug funds with one hand and bribes from narco-traffickers
with the other.

The "war on drugs" that involves trying to stop traffic in drugs out of
Latin America ought to be redirected into a "war on the use of drugs"
inside the borders of this country. That crusade should be aimed at
stopping adolescents from trying illegal drugs and helping people break out
of the cycle of addiction.

The use of illegal drugs is a huge problem within our borders; it fuels
crime, the breakdown of families and wasted lives. Unfortunately, our war
on drugs generates those very same problems.

For decades, the tactics in this country have centered on putting drug
users and petty dealers behind bars. The alarming result is that almost 10
percent of black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are incarcerated. Many,
many of these men are in jail because of two things: They had no competent
legal assistance at trial, and they faced mandatory minimum sentences for
possession of drugs. Reminiscent of the Latin American policies, it's a
jail-first-ask-questions-later approach to the drug problem.

Meanwhile, addiction treatment has been shown repeatedly to bring down the
use of drugs and give addicts another chance at life. Also effective are
broad educational problems that teach adolescents to resist the peer
pressure that so often results in experimentation with dangerous narcotics.
Little is spent on those programs.

Still, the U.S. government continues to spend billions in Latin America on
anti-drug surveillance, training of military crews and other programs aimed
at reducing production of marijuana and cocaine. This is a "war" we cannot win.