CHANGE DRUG WAR TARGETS

WASHINGTON -- An air of hypocrisy surrounds President Clinton's
decision to visit Colombia later this month to show his personal
concern for that nation's increasingly bloody -- and expensive -- war
against narco-guerrillas.

The guerrillas now control more than a third of that South American
nation because of improved weaponry and a strategy of brazen terrorist
attacks. Mr. Clinton's scheduled visit, in turn, is meant to
underscore the importance of America's $1.3 billion aid package to the
embattled Colombian government, a package approved by Congress in July
and freighted mostly with military aid.

But as Mr. Clinton now reiterates America's commitment to stopping the
hemispheric drug trade and its violence, his words ring increasingly
hollow. That's because U.S. drug policies in South America and on the
streets of U.S. cities like Baltimore and Washington -- I've worked in
the nation's capital for the past 10 years as a drug counselor -- have
led directly to the mess in Colombia.

In a very real way, the United States is arming both sides in the
Colombian conflict while simultaneously encouraging a rate of
addiction to crack and heroin in America that makes the Colombian war
inevitable.

Here's how: In recent years, the United States has largely succeeded
in shutting down coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru. But as demand
for cocaine remains high on the United States, cultivation has simply
shifted to Colombia, with prices climbing because of the reduction in
supply.

This has poured millions of additional dollars into the pockets of
Colombia's biggest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, which largely controls the drug trade there. With more
money, the rebels are coming closer and closer to toppling the
Colombian government.

To prevent this, the new U.S. aid package provides nearly $1 billion
in anti-drug support to Colombia in 2001, including nearly 1,000 U.S.
troops and advisers and 60 helicopters to help deploy U.S.-trained
battalions of Colombian soldiers.

Our policy, then, is to further militarize the Colombian government in
order to combat rebel operations which are expanding as a direct
result of our policies. We're arming both sides.

Now, switch to the inner-city streets of America.

The same policies tearing South America apart play themselves out in
only slightly different fashion here. I've seen this working with
homeless crack and heroin addicts in drug-ridden Washington
neighborhoods.

The dealers at 14th Street and Park Road NW, to choose just one
market, are local suppliers. They form a sort of miniature Peru,
offering a product desired by users but declared illegal and the
target of enforcement by the U.S. government -- in this case the local
police and their increasingly militarized special narcotics units.

Targeting petty users and street dealers is the centerpiece of our
national war on drugs, so officers raid, badger, arrest and jail the
dealers at 14th and Park Road until the market collapses.

But attacking local supply without addressing demand guarantees that
drug markets and drug sales won't cease. They simply move to another
block momentarily untargeted by police raids. With more raids and
arrests, this new market will collapse too and move again, and again
and again. It's a mobile supply base just like the one in South
America -- Peru to Bolivia to Colombia -- made possible by unchanging
demand.

Unfortunately, the relocation of American street markets frequently
means a market enters a previously unaffected neighborhood, bringing
with it all the attendant violence and mayhem of the drug trade.

Here's the bottom line: Virtually every inner-city neighborhood in
America is guaranteed, sooner or later, to have a drug market on its
sidewalks, just as every Andean nation seems destined, sooner or
later, to be the hemisphere's prime coca producer. Ecuador and
Venezuela now wait terrified while American-supplied planes spray
pesticides on Colombia's newly productive coca fields.

The war on U.S. streets also increases the risk of addiction by
casting a wider net than would otherwise be spread, reeling in child
addicts who stood a better chance staying drug-free until police --
however inadvertently -- pushed a market onto their block,
hyper-exposing him to crack.

Again, I've seen this phenomenon by working in many of Washington's
worst affected neighborhoods. Every new addict, in turn, creates more
pressure for more supply from South America, wreaking havoc here and
there. It's all interconnected.

In the end, demand -- whether casual use or outright addiction -- is
the fundamental issue from which all other ills evolve, from the thug
shootings 10 blocks from the White House to the kidnappings and mass
executions in Colombia's Putamayo jungle.

Unless and until we address demand at home with adequate treatment and
a response strategy that treats drug use as a public health issue
instead of a criminal justice issue, we will continue to do much more
harm than good in the war on drugs.

Our options are simple: Decriminalize drugs as a first step toward
complete legalization or continue our national policy of blaming all
our troubles on nonviolent drug addicts in our midst and peasant coca
growers 3,000 miles away.