ANTI-COKE ADS TARGET EUROPE

Colombia Cites Celebrity Users

Colombia's vice president is taking a hard-hitting anti-drug message
to Europe, complaining about cocaine-snorting celebrities who he says
are financing the drug-fueled civil conflict bleeding this South
American nation.

Vice President Francisco Santos spoke of supermodel Kate Moss,
although she doesn't appear in the ads that he planned to unveil in
London today, along with 13 European anti-drug czars.

Santos called Moss a perfect example of liberal European attitudes
toward drug use because she is enjoying a career comeback after a
British tabloid last year published photos of her apparently snorting
cocaine.

"To me its baffling that somebody who helps cause so much pain in
Colombia is doing better than ever and winning more contracts than
ever," the vice president said.

Moss's modeling agency in London, Storm, did not respond to a phone
call and e-mail seeking comment.

Moss lost contracts after the photos were published, but her career
resumed after she spent time at a clinic in Arizona. She apologized to
"all the people I have let down" over the incident, but was never
charged with any drug offense.

"Cocaine not only destroys you, it also destroys a country" is the
theme of the advertising campaign designed to change attitudes among
Europeans about their booming cocaine habit in the same way that "Just
Say No" did in the United States.

Santos spoke of what cocaine consumption does to Colombia, where
drug-financed armed groups murder hundreds of people each year and
force thousands to abandon their homes. Gangs, rebel groups and
right-wing militias all traffic in the drug.

"We need to tell Europeans that that line of coke they snort is
tainted in blood," Santos said.

One ad in the "cocaine curse" campaign depicts a pinstriped "coke
head," with an oversized nose, laying land mines in a coca field.
Colombia now ranks first in the world in land-mine casualties,
averaging four a day.

Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, hopes European
governments will fund placement of the ads on billboards, television
and even bathrooms of trendy dance clubs.

It has also launched an English-language Web site,
www.sharedresponsibility.gov.co, to highlight its efforts in the
U.S.-sponsored war on drugs, including aerial eradication of more than
1.5 million acres of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, since 2002.

Colombia is also seeking more European aid for projects to help
peasant farmers switch from coca to legal crops such as tropical fruits.