SNORT COKE, KILL PEOPLE

Let young Americans considering a cocaine habit consider the
consequences.

Most crackheads couldn't find Colombia on a map, but if someone could
show them the consequences of their addiction there, would they think
twice?

Not likely. After all, these people are destroying themselves, and
their families.

Still, the effect is real. Colombia, which is about to receive more
than a billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to wipe out the cocaine
trade there, provides about 80 percent of the world's coke. Americans
aren't the only abusers, but dust bowls of Colombian coke fly up the
nostrils of Americans every day.

Those Americans may think they're just having fun with their harmless
vice. The truth is, they are playing a role in the deaths of human
beings.

And that's not just the pusher who was gunned down the other day in a
drive-by. We're talking about the tens of thousands of people who have
died in the past few decades in Colombia.

To be sure, the war there is about more than drugs. The last
significant Marxist insurgency is ripping apart that nation. But the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which controls large portions
of southern Colombia, couldn't go on for long without profits from the
drug trade.

And that drug trade would fizzle out if demand from the United States
weren't so high.

How high? The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that 3.8
million Americans over age 12 use the drug. The DEA thinks some 1.75
million use it at least once a month.

The market has shrunk greatly since 1982, the year of peak cocaine use
in the United States. Then, about 10.4 million Americans used cocaine.

The shrinkage is reason to celebrate. But 3.8 million people using
anything is a large market, one that someone will supply illegally or
legally, from Colombia or elsewhere.

The market economy cares nothing for laws. It is an amoral force. If
you want it, I'll get it for you. It's as simple as that.

Colombia's drug lords aren't poisoning Americans. They aren't forcing
Americans to do anything. American drug abusers are poisoning
themselves, and the drug barons and communist guerrillas are more than
happy to provide the poison.

The addicted crackhead may have a tough time caring about anyone, much
less himself. But drug haters should use President Clinton's visit to
Colombia this week, and the $1.3 billion we're sending to that
country, to make a point about drugs.

Let impressionable minds -- the minds of our young people -- know that
there is a direct correlation between drug abusers in this country and
the suffering people of Colombia.

Let them know that the chain of woe that starts with each snort of
cocaine does not stop at the user, or his family, or even his
community. It stretches to the far-flung jungles of a war-torn country.

Let them know -- before they get hooked.