LATEST PRIORITY IN THE DRUG WAR

On Thursday, March 16, the House of Representatives will vote on a
$1.7 billion emergency-aid package to escalate the war on drugs in
Colombia. Initiated by the White House and enthusiastically backed by
the House Republican leadership, it is a product of the drug war's
perverse priorities and another example of the disturbing link between
campaign cash and public policy.

Let's start with the cash being spread around Washington to help
grease the wheels for the aid bonanza.

The Colombian government hired Vernon Jordan's law firm -Akin, Gump,
Strauss, Hauer & Feld - which he has since left, to stump for it on
the Hill. Indeed, when the House Appropriations Committee met last
week to consider the White House proposal, a member of the committee,
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Illinois Demcrat, noticed that an Akin, Gump
lobbyist was in attendance. He must have gone away happy because the
committee not only approved the president's $1.2 billion request but
added another $500 million to the pot.

The Colombians have other powerful allies in Washington. Most
persistent has been a collection of multinational corporations with
operations in Colombia - including Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco and
Enron - that has been lobbying both Congress and the administration
for a big-buck package that would serve their business interests there.

And speaking of business interests, more than $400 million of the aid
will be spent on the purchase of 63 helicopters manufactured by two
U.S. firms - Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies,
and Bell Helicopter Textron - that have also been playing the Capitol
Hill money game. In the last two election cycles, Textron and its
employees donated close to a million dollars to both Republicans and
Democrats, and United Technologies gave more than $700,000. "It's
business for us, and we are as aggressive as anybody," one Bell
Helicopter lobbyist told the Legal Times. "I'm just trying to sell
helicopters."

Underscoring the incestuous relationship between commerce and drug
policy, Tom Umberg, the architect of the administration's Colombian
initiative, is now moving from the White House Office of Drug Control
Policy to the law firm of Morrison & Foerster where he will represent
Colombia and other Latin American countries on trade issues.

It seems that in Colombia, as in Washington, no good deed goes
unrewarded.

Unfortunately, some good deeds have deadly consequences. Colombia is
in the midst of a protracted three-way civil war, pitting the
Colombian army, which has one of the worst human-rights records in the
Western Hemisphere, against leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary
groups, both largely funded by the drug trade.

It is the army that will receive the lion's share of the U.S. money
- -prompting senior defense officials to express privately their fear
that our military's expanding role in fighting the war on drugs could
draw the United States into another Vietnam.

Maybe that's why the Clinton administration decided to introduce the
Colombian aid as part of a larger emergency-spending package -
bundling the potentially controversial measure with proposals only a
coldhearted misanthrope would oppose.

Along with the money for Colombia, the bill includes $2.2 billion for
relief from natural disasters such as Hurricane Floyd and $854 million
for military health care. It's an old legislative ploy designed to
squelch debate and force politicians to vote for wasteful - or even
terrible -measures just because they don't want to be painted as being
against God, country and disaster relief.

And we just saw how George W. Bush was able to twist John McCain's
opposition to such legislative chicanery into an attack ad portraying
him as somehow pro-breast cancer.

Mr. Jackson is one of the members who will nevertheless vote against
the bill. "It's absurd," he told me. "There wasn't even any language
added tying the aid to human-rights concerns.

And California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi's amendment to spend
equivalent amounts of money on the demand side was defeated during the
Appropriations Committee markup - even though treatment has been
proven to be 23 times more cost-effective than eradication of crops
and 11 times more cost-effective than interdiction."

The cost of the helicopters alone would provide treatment for almost
200,000 substance users or drug-prevention services for more than 4
million Americans. We're about to spend close to $2 billion on
Colombia, while here at home we have 3.6 million addicts not receiving
the treatment they need. This despite the fact that drug czar Barry
McCaffrey's budget is expected to rise to a proposed $19.2 billion
next year.

When Richard Nixon - hardly one to be accused of being soft on crime -
declared a war on drugs in 1971, he directed more than 60 percent of
the funds into treatment.

Now, we're down to 18 percent. Since 1980, through both Republican and
Democratic administrations, the emphasis has turned to interdiction,
crop eradication, border surveillance and punishment.

The evidence is clear that it's been a misguided use of
resources.

But putting $1.7 billion into Colombia, in the middle of a civil war,
is more than misguided - it's nuts. And if it's not voted down in the
House on Thursday, it needs to be stopped in the Senate.