FINANCING THE DRUG WAR: CONGRESS STILL FUNDING A FAILURE

America's heavily armored "war on drugs" -- at last count $250 billion
and still losing badly -- received an alarming new lease on life from
the U.S. House in late March. The Clinton administration's $1.3
billion "aid" program, focused on Colombia, triumphed on a 262-158
roll call.

Eighty percent of the money is earmarked for military uses -- Black
Hawk and Huey helicopters, subsidizing Colombian police operations,
training and equipping counternarcotic battalions, and interdicting
cocaine and heroine as the drugs flow from farms along the Andes.

Noting that Colombia is reputedly the source of 90 percent of the
cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin used in the United States,
Speaker Dennis Hastert proclaimed, "We can't ignore this issue."

But military aid to Colombia? Here's a land already the largest
recipient of U.S. military assistance outside the Middle East. It's
been the scene of massive drug eradication efforts since before the
days of the Medellin drug cartel. Competition for drug profits infects
the long, blood-soaked struggle among Colombia's government and left-
and right-wing guerillas. Countless thousands, many of them innocent
bystanders, have been killed.

The question is: Will mega-arms to Colombia -- even if we stop short
of Vietnam-like commitment of American troops -- reduce the flow of
drugs into the United States?

There's not an iota of evidence to suggest so. We've provided military
aid and backed an aggressive Colombian herbicide spraying program.
Despite that, asserts Kevin Zeese, president of the Washington-based
Common Sense for Drug Policy, Columbia's coca product has tripled
since 1992. Enough Colombian poppy was grown in 1999 to produce eight
metric tons of heroin.

On the streets of America, the "war on drugs " has left a flood of
heroin and cocaine at prices skirting historic lows, according to
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation President Eric Sterling, former
counsel to the House Subcommittee on Crime.

Plus, there's now a long chain of examples showing that when drug
production gets too dangerous or difficult in one country or location,
new trafficking and new drugs spring up elsewhere and actually
increase drug supplies.

Destruction of the Turkey-France-U.S. supply line for heroin in the
'60s simply expanded sources in Mexico and Asia. President Nixon's
first drug war featured searching every third vehicle on the
U.S.-Mexico border; traffickers just switched to boats and planes.
When President Reagan used the military to block marijuana flowing in
through Florida, Colombian traffickers moved over to less bulky
cocaine and substituted supply lines along U.S. coasts and through
Mexico.

Today, notes Mark Greer of the California-based DrugSense group
( http://www.drugsense.org ), there are signs of expanding use of
methamphetamine -- domestically produced speed. Even if the Colombian
drug war actually reduces cocaine availability, he suggests,
methamphetamine will fill in as the logical replacement drug.

Can't official Washington hear? Lend an ear, for example, to retired
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Sylvester Salcedo. He was so appalled at President
Clinton's Colombian drug program that he mailed the White House his
Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for "superior performance" in
fighting narcotraffickers.

After his military duty, Salcedo worked as a Spanish teacher in a
low-income Boston neighborhood. Having seen both sides of the drug
war, he's now convinced that chances for success through military
interdiction "are ridiculous."

The militarized war on drugs scatters victims across the globe. The
Colombia drug war aid, said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., "gives money
to drug traffickers who kill other drug traffickers and murder
innocent civilians."

Then in the United States, the huge profits to be gained in drug
dealing lead to turf fights and more murders. We've seen how zealous
hunting down of small-time drug dealers criminalizes hundreds of
thousands of our youth, ruins families, packs our prisons, undermines
respect for our criminal justice system.

"It's the height of paternalism," warns Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif.,
"to say that our drug problem is due to other countries sending us
drugs. It's our problem because we demand those drugs, it's our
problem because we don't supply rehab for addicts that want to get
clean."

Campbell's remarks raise the fascinating thought: What if the billions
we're spending on our drug wars could be diverted to treatment
programs -- programs that research shows are sensationally more
effective in reducing addiction?

And why not then move toward decriminalizing drugs, even while
labeling dangerous narcotics for what they are and mounting massive
efforts (as we've started to learn with tobacco) to discourage their
use?

Prohibition never worked for alcohol; it won't for drugs. It's sad
that the Clinton administration continued most of the discredited
Reagan-Bush administration drug wars.

But the most recent House vote, in which Campbell and several dozen
other Republicans were willing to join a determined group of urban
Democrats in opposing the drug war expansion in Colombia, suggests a
ray of light -- hope that political support is slowly building for
less lethal policies toward Latin America, and with some luck, toward
our own urban neighborhoods too.