COUNTRIES FILL U.S.'S NEED FOR ILLICIT DRUGS

In a sign that illicit drug trade is becoming more and more an
established industry, new countries are cutting into the marketplace
and American drug gangs are being ousted out of the wholesale trade in
their own country.

Mexican and U.S. drug traffickers face increasing competition from
their counterparts in Caribbean and Central American nations, U.S.
drug czar Barry McCaffrey reports in a review of trends in the
narcotics trade.

Mexico -- which has again been certified by the Clinton administration
as a full and helpful partner in the war against drugs -- is still the
leading route for cocaine shipments into the United States.

But traffickers in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Panama
are rapidly gaining ground, McCaffrey says.

Meanwhile, American drug gangs have been pushed out of the wholesale
domestic trade by Dominicans, Colombians and Mexicans.

Americans simply can't compete because they're easier to watch by U.S.
authorities. Meanwhile, wholesalers from other countries have set up
shop in the U.S., moving in without police histories and hiding their
proceeds in foreign banks.

While the U.S. concentrates on trying to stem the flow of cocaine from
Colombia through Mexico into this country, other countries have made
big inroads into the trade. ''There's a lot more (cocaine) showing up
in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Jamaica axis,'' McCaffrey reported.

Panama may become a special case, and in time it could become the
major player in world cocaine trade. With U.S. troops out of Panama
for the first time in nearly a century, drug trafficking is increasing
rapidly in that country. And the increase is expected to continue to
escalate because of geography. Colombia, the region's leading drug
producer, is a next-door neighbor to Panama.

Colombia also illustrates the complexity of the drug trade. Consider
these facts:

Leftist rebels in Colombia protect cocaine shipments, and even
coordinate planting the crop and move shipments. Meanwhile, right-wing
paramilitary groups who are fighting the rebels operate cocaine
processing labs. And when the Colombian government tried to bribe its
way to a peace accord with the rebels by giving them a
Switzerland-size chunk of Colombia, the rebels quickly planted the
35,000 acres of cocaine on their new property.

It has become obvious that the U.S. demand for illicit drugs --
especially cocaine -- has created a monstrous, complex supply mechanism
that can rapidly change its shape and form in response to every effort
we make to bring it under control.

What may be needed is a U.S. plan broader, more sophisticated and
costly than anyone has heretofore imagined.

And all because too many Americans can't simply say "No."