WHERE ARE RESULTS IN WAR ON DRUGS?

How Much More Will Be Spent On A Policy That Is Clearly Not Working?

President Clinton has just told Colombia the United States will commit $1.3
billion to help that nation "combat cocaine trafficking," adding that
amount to the billions already thrown down the rathole otherwise known as
the "war against drugs."

The truth is that what we have here is either another Prohibition or -- if
you prefer a more recent analogy -- the law-enforcement equivalent of
Vietnam. But nobody seems to want to deal with the truth.

Those of us on the conservative side always lambaste liberals for
continuing to waste money on failed programs like welfare, for foolishly
believing that if billions of dollars didn't get the job done, a few
billion more will. Even if it's a goal we support -- to reduce the damage
done by drugs -- shouldn't we be asking for the same kind of "show us the
results" evidence we demand of other government initiatives?

We didn't during Prohibition, which tried to attack the supply of alcohol
just as we're trying to eradicate the supply of drugs today. The result was
an explosion of criminality and the creation of a whole new criminal
empire. There has been nothing to equal it since -- well, until the
creation of the new drug-criminal empire.

And we didn't during Vietnam, when billions of dollars were squandered and
countless lives lost -- including more than 50,000 American ones -- in a
war, it is now clear, the politicians did not really have the will to win.
They were just going through the motions.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana -- perhaps unwisely -- spoke the truth
when he said of the drug war, "Colombia can put a stop to drugs here at
some point. But if the demand continues, somebody else somewhere else in
the world is going to produce them. What we are talking about is the most
lucrative business in the world."

Columnist William F. Buckley once wrote that we could stop the drug problem
in a heartbeat if we really wanted to. Just start public executions --
quickly, with little or no appeal -- for every person caught with any
amount of drug. The problem will disappear in a matter of weeks.

But, he asked, is that something a civilized country would or should tolerate?

Obviously not. But until we do something to attack the demand side --
whether it is through criminal penalties or education and rehabilitation or
some combination -- we are just fooling around no less than we were in
Vietnam. It is seldom the supply of something that is a problem. It's that
so many desire it in the first place.

With our $1.3 billion, we will be funneling aid to a country in a three-way
civil war, one in which there are credible reports of obscene human rights
violations -- including the wanton murder of children by paramilitary
units. We will, in effect, be subsidizing such atrocities.

This country has decided to suspend its monitoring of those violations as a
condition of giving Colombia money. We can't handle our addictions, so we
inflict atrocities on innocent children. Is that what we are prepared to
tolerate in our war on drugs?