U.S. UNDERESTIMATION OF FOREIGN COCAINE FLOW IMPAIRS DRUG WAR

WASHINGTON - Government authorities believe that they have badly
underestimated the flow of cocaine out of Colombia and other drug-producing
nations, a realization that casts doubt on years of basic assumptions
behind the war on drugs.

Drug-intelligence officials are particularly alarmed over their discovery
of a new high-yield variety of coca being grown and processed in Colombia,
the No. 1 supplier of cocaine to the United States.

That, together with a growing acknowledgment that their methods for
measuring narcotics production may be seriously flawed, means that the
government estimates of global drug trafficking are likely to "skyrocket"
early next year, said officials in the drug-intelligence community.

Estimates of cocaine production in Colombia alone could triple, two
government sources said. "It's going to be big," said one senior
law-enforcement official who asked not to be identified.

The revised estimates, combined with a soon-to-be-released plan for
countering lax coordination among the various drug-intelligence agencies,
are likely to alter U.S. tactics in the $17.8-billion drug war for years to
come, sources said.

Key policy-makers said that the estimates of worldwide drug production,
while imprecise, are critical in allocating drug-interdiction resources,
plotting strategy and influencing diplomatic relations with drug-producing
nations.

"The policy-maker ought to have correct estimates of how (drugs are
flowing), patterns, where, when, so that you're not buying a bunch of Coast
Guard cutters to go to the Eastern Caribbean if most of your smuggling is
on maritime craft in the Eastern Pacific," Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, head of
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in an interview.

Yet the new numbers jeopardize McCaffrey's ambitious goals for cutting
narcotics supplies to the United States 25 percent by 2002 and 50 percent
by 2007. Some critics of U.S. policy are already demanding an end to the
nation's war on drugs. News of higher cocaine and heroin production, as
well as an explosion in border confiscations of the designer drug Ecstasy,
could bolster their arguments that current anti-drug strategies are failing.

Authorities have been working quietly for several years to devise a better
way to track the global flow of drugs, combining their long-used satellite
photos of crop fields with new, more precise analyses of how poppy, coca
and other crops are processed into drugs for street sale.

But embarrassing shortcomings in the system became apparent last month
after U.S. and Colombian authorities broke up a major Latin American
cocaine ring. The volume of cocaine that they now believe the "Juvenal"
network was bringing into the United States - up to 30 metric tons a month
- - rivaled previous estimates of all cartel imports combined, officials said.

"There was just amazement that one organization would have the ability to
distribute that much cocaine a month," a law-enforcement official said.

Some government officials believe that Latin American traffickers are
sending more cocaine to Europe than ever. Others think that growers are
stockpiling large supplies of the drug. Still others suggest that U.S.
residents are consuming more cocaine than previously feared.

But outside observers such as Mark A.R. Kleiman, director of the Drug
Policy Analysis Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, say
that the estimates are little more than guesswork used by the
administration to hit up Congress for more money. And they point to
extensive surveys, emergency room admissions and other data showing a
decline in drug use in the United States.

"More cocaine in the U.S.? Hard to believe," Kleiman said. "Where are all
the corpses?"