World News: The Americas: Dope wars: America's unwinnable civil conflict:
Since 1980 the US has spent Dollars 500bn on a battle against drugs. But
today Americans still snort, sniff, smoke, inject and ingest huge amounts
of illegal substances: Part 1: Battle without end:

DOPE WARS: PART 1: BATTLE WITHOUT END

Stephen Samuelson of Standish, Michigan, is an artist who does pastoral
murals on the white brick walls of prison cell blocks. A former drug
dealer, user and biker, he has so far served 32 years for crimes committed
under the influence.

He has a true insider's view of America's war on drugs. "It is the little
guys who end up in prison," he says. "We keep the system going. We're the
job security for the guards, for the lawyers, for the judges."

Mr Samuelson, alongside his own victims, is among the casualties of
America's longest and most intractable conflict. Since 1980, the anti- drug
effort has drained an estimated Dollars 500bn (Pounds 331bn) from the
treasuries of state and federal governments - much of it to lock up drug
offenders.

For all the money and effort, it is a fight the US seems to be losing.
Experts say that hard drug use may be down from 15 years ago but Americans
still snort, sniff, smoke, ingest and inject huge amounts of illegal
substances.

In cities and towns, drugs are as available as ever and often cost less
than they did years ago.

Yet the war goes on, costing the US almost Dollars 20bn this year,
producing few gains and much suffering to its many victims. Some critics
ask, why not declare victory and get out, as the US did in Vietnam?

This series attempts to address that question through examining a few of
the hundreds of programmes that comprise the war on drugs.

From an office in the White House complex, General Barry McCaffrey,
commander-in-chief - or "drug czar" - holds a tight rein on the activities
of more than 50 agencies. He has vowed to halve drug supplies by 2007. To
achieve this goal, the general sets a pace that is so "relentless,
high-pressured and expedient in nature" that he is unable to retain
sufficient staff, according to the General Accounting Office, the
investigative arm of Congress.

The general is not the first leader to set ambitious goals. In the 1960s,
the UN agreed to rid the world of cocaine, heroin and marijuana in 25
years. President George Bush in 1989 promised to cut drug use by 55 per
cent in the next decade.

All the strategies, targets and performance measures, posted on the walls
of Gen McCaffrey's office are aimed at a ubiquitous enemy. Pushers still
thrive in thousands of city parks and rural towns. In New York, a popular
computer game, "Dope Wars", allows players to act as "drug dealers", buying
and selling as the market changes in cities around the world.

Over the past 10 years, overdose fatalities have soared across the western
states. While demand for some drugs has fallen, it has risen for others.
Ecstasy, a party drug many young people believe is harmless, has become
"the pot of our generation," said one user.

The administration's campaign to wipe out illegal drugs has become the
feeding trough for a sprawling collection of vested interests. Many of the
lawmakers who vote for anti-drug programmes genuinely care about the toll
taken on American society. But others are simply afraid to be seen as
"soft" on drugs or crime.

Business is generally a strong supporter of the anti-drug war - some
companies because they benefit from lucrative contracts, others because
they lose from the climate created by drugs.

The constituency ranges from military contractors to prison guard unions to
drug testing laboratories and social workers.

Anticipating commercial gain, many US companies lobbied hard for increased
counter-narcotics assistance to Colombia, including military hardware
manufacturers and oil companies.

As the nation's prison population approaches the 2m mark, the so-called
"prison industrial complex", which builds, supplies and guards
penitentiaries, has lobbied for a tough line on long-term incarceration. A
new study by the Justice Policy Institute found one in four inmates - more
than 450,000 - have been convicted of drug offences.

"Drug policy has been driven more by politics than policy," said
Congressman Ted Strickland, an Ohio Democrat who once worked as a prison
psychologist. "The drug war has made it necessary for prisons to expand and
caused the private prison industry to be born. That industry works
aggressively in building prisons and getting public dollars to support them."

Police and federal agents also like the drug war. Under controversial
"asset forfeiture" rules, aimed at drug "king pins", they can keep a share
of the profits when they seize houses, cars, boats, cash and other property
of suspected drug offenders. This has produced widespread corruption and
mistreatment, documented in many reports and a new book by author James
Bovard, "Feeling your pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in
the Clinton-Gore Years."

Assets are often seized on the basis of the word of confidential informants
(sometimes ex-convicts), who receive up to 25 per cent of the value of any
property the government sequesters, says Mr Bovard. "The vast majority of
people whose property is seized by federal agents are never formally
charged with a crime."

For all its cost and controversy, the drug war drew virtually no attention
at the Republican convention last week, nor is it an issue on the agenda at
the Democratic convention next week.

But out on the streets, it is all too real. Protesters held a "shadow
convention" in Philadelphia, a few miles from the Republican meeting.
Mothers of the longtime incarcerated carried pictures of their daughters,
holding vigils like the mothers of the "disappeared" in Argentina. Tomorrow
Part 2: Crackdown on Colombia