CORRUPTED BY THE WAR ON DRUGS

America's "war on drugs" that began under the Nixon Administration has
now become a fight against hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug
sellers - and a handful of violent ones too. Worse yet, the anti-drug
war is corrupting officials from Marin County to South America.

For the past several weeks I have been complaining about US plans for
a major military commitment to Colombia. The Clinton Administration's
plan is to provide that country with more than $500 million worth of
aircraft supposedly to be used to fight cocaine traffickers.

Indeed, some Colombians trafficking in cocaine for the US market are
being protected by leftist guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia), but as several of us in the press have noted, the
Clinton Administration actually seems more concerned with putting down
a leftist insurgency than in stopping the flow of cocaine.

Protecting traffickers earns the FARC an estimated $500 million per
year, and this finances a fighting force of 17,000 well-armed
guerrillas - enough to threaten the Colombian government. But is that
government worth saving?

The Colombian military, for its part, arms and supports rightwing
militias organized as the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC), who not only brutalize ordinary civilians but also process
cocaine themselves and protect their own clientele of traffickers. In
fact, Carlos Castano, leader of the AUC has admitted that cocaine
provides 70 percent of the AUC's financing.

Unfortunately, General Barry McCaffrey, the US drug tsar, has
convinced the Colombian government that the insurgents are at Bogota's
gates while simultaneously convincing President Clinton that his
"legacy" is at stake if he doesn't side with Colombia's rightwing
cocaine crowd against Colombia's leftwing cocaine crowd.

In recent weeks, arms makers have joined McCaffrey in lobbying the
President to enter the fray. As a result, when Clinton asked Congress
to finance aircraft for Colombia, the usual pork-barrel politics
began. Politicians trying to help US arms manufacturers approved far
more spending than Clinton had requested. Their over-reaching, in
fact, was so egregious that it forced Senate leaders to at least delay
a final vote on the proposal.

Nonetheless, the "war on drugs" is ravaging this country. Money that
should be spent educating young people is being diverted to building
prisons that will mostly house young adults convicted of non-violent
drug crimes. This distortion of our civic values will probably be felt
for years to come. Innocent youths are suffering from inadequate
education while our prisons are turning youthful offenders into
hardened criminals. If ever there was a formula for social problems,
this is it.

Moreover, the most notable characteristic of the "war on drugs" is
that - like Prohibition (1920-1933) - it corrupts most of what it
touches. In the Los Angeles Police Department, for example, officers
of the Ramparts Precinct have stolen drugs from people they arrested
and planted drugs on people they wanted to arrest. Now that their
crimes have been revealed by other officers who turned state's
evidence, the Los Angeles DA's Office has had to ask LA courts to
throw out dozens of convictions.

During Richard Nixon's presidency, the US got Mexican authorities to
spray paraquat poison on their marijuana fields. Health-minded pot
smokers in the US responded by starting to grow their own dope, and
domestic marijuana cultivation soon spread from California to North
Carolina.

This, in turn, resulted in the federally organized Campaign Against
Marijuana Planting (CAMP), which was launched in the 1980s. To get
local law enforcement agencies to participate, the feds offered them
some of the assets that belonged to people who were raided. Soon
police were counting on CAMP seizures to help finance their
departments.

The result was more corruption. A federal drug-enforcement agent,
Charles Stowell, developed a remarkable ability to spot pot patches
from the air and use the "evidence" to secure search warrants. In
1992, Stowell's testimony allowed officers to get a warrant to search
a the property of a Malibu Hills rancher. When the predawn raid began,
the rancher, Donald Scott, hearing noise outside, went to his front
door with a shotgun, and lawmen shot him dead, only to find out Scott
wasn't growing any marijuana.

Nonetheless, agent Stowell and a Marin County Sheriff's deputy, Gary
Brock, in 1993 flew over Dr. Alan Ager's West Marin property, claimed
to have seen pot growing in a shed, and secured a search warrant.
Officers here seized 1,179 plants at Ager's Moon Hill home. However,
the officers' claim of seeing the pot through clear plastic covering
the shed proved bogus since it actually had a translucent fiberglass
roof. Federal Judge Vaughn Walker then ruled the search was illegal
and said deputy Brock and agent Stowell were either liars or
incompetent. (Ager, however, went to jail last year in a separate
pot-growing case.)

But perhaps the most amazing instance of recent corruption has
involved Army Col. James Hiett, who headed US anti-drug operations in
Colombia until last August when his wife Laurie was caught smuggling
drugs. As it happened, the colonel's wife Laurie had become a cocaine
addict, financing her habit by smuggling drugs into the US. After
authorities intercepted two 1.2-kilogram packages of heroin she had
mailed to New York from the US Embassy in Colombia, she turned herself
in and three months ago pled guilty to smuggling $700,000 worth of
drugs into the US.

Initially, Mrs. Hiett denied her husband, the anti-drug commander,
knew anything about her drug trafficking, but last week he pled guilty
to ignoring her smuggling instead of reporting it. She now faces up to
nine years in prison while he remains on active duty stateside.