COLOMBIA NEEDS HELP

To the Editor:

While Anthony Lewis rightly points out the futility of fighting a "drug war"
by trying to choke off foreign supply of narcotics (column, June 24),
Colombia nonetheless deserves American aid.

America's drug war has exported destabilization and destruction to Colombia,
which at great cost fought off a hijacking of their state by professional
narco-criminals in the late 1980's and the 90's, only now to face two
entrenched rebel groups fearsomely armed by drug money. Without American
aid, Colombia will struggle to restore public order.

Colombia's two biggest rebel groups menace Latin America's longest-running
democracy and will continue to do so regardless of any United States drug
policy changes. Colombia deserves aid not as an instrument of our drug war,
but as recompense for the harm our drug war has wrought on its society.

BEN HELLER