POOR SOLUTION - LET'S DON'T GET INVOLVED IN A LONG WAR IN COLOMBIA

The Clinton administration, like most Americans, is frustrated over the
failure of our efforts to win the 40-year-old war on drugs.

That frustration is compounded at every turn. Most recently, it was revealed
that even the man in charge of our military drug-fighting operations in
Colombia had fallen to the temptation of the easy money that the drug trade
offers.

Laurie Hiett, wife of U.S. Army Col. James Hiett, pleaded guilty in January
to laundering money for drug pushers. Now her husband, a 24-year veteran of
the Army, has pleaded guilty, too. Apparently he became involved by trying
to help Mrs. Hiett after Army investigators told him that she might be
involved.

The Hiett tragedy drives home serious questions about our efforts to stanch
the flow of drugs from South America.

Among them:

1. Is it possible to keep narcotics out of the hands of people who want them
badly enough to pay enormous prices for them?

2. Although most Americans find this solution unappealing, is there a way to
legalize the most commonly abused drugs, register addicts and provide them
with known doses at small cost? This would eliminate some of the danger to
users, remove the profit motive and cut down the huge amount of criminal
activity related to drug purchases.

3. Should we increase our military commitment in the countries that export
drugs?

Forty years of frustration would seem to indicate that the answer to the
first question is no.

Question 2 is one to which we should give more consideration.

The answer to the third question is no, we should not get more deeply
involved militarily, as the frustrated Clinton administration is planning to
do in Colombia.

In the first place, unless we can reduce Americans' appetites for illegal
drugs, thereby slowing the flow of money to Colombia, stopping up the other
end of the pipeline will only increase prices. The crimes committed by
addicts to get money to feed their habits will increase in turn.

In the second place, our pared-down military forces are already spread too
thinly overseas. We might start out by sending small numbers of military
advisers and equipment to Colombia, but the commitment will inevitably grow.

Moreover, corruption is widespread in Colombia, and the morass of competing
forces is confusing. There are the drug barons, a military that is more or
less independent of the civilian government, leftist guerrillas, right-wing
guerrillas, peasants sympathetic with one faction or another, a corrupt
judicial system, and so on.

It is a figurative jungle as well as a literal one. Sorting out the good
guys from the bad guys is next to impossible.

There is no simple solution to our drug problem. Certainly there is not a
solution in a military commitment that could easily turn into a quagmire
from which we could not extricate ourselves for years.

Mike Rouse