COVERDELL'S ANTI-DRUG PACKAGE RECEIVES HARSH CRITICISM

U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga) outlined legislation in late
October that would provide Colombia and surrounding regions with
approximately $1.5 billion over three years for anti-narcotics efforts
- -- and that has many policy analysts voicing objections.

The Anti-Drug Alliance with Colombia and the Andrean Region of 1999
(a.k.a. the Alianza Act) was announced by Coverdell and co-sponsors
Sens. Mike DeWine and Chuck Grassley during an Oct. 20 press
conference in Washington, D.C.

The Andean region includes front line states to Colombia -- Bolivia,
Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.

According to a Coverdell press release, the package provides for $540
million to "support urgent new programs by the Colombian government,"
including the national police and military forces; $200 million for
air interdiction programs and radar capacities; $205 million for
enhancement of the Colombian National Police and the Colombian Navy;
and $100 million to counter the drug trade with the development of
other economic opportunities, and to improve human rights.

The problem with the legislation, according to the director of the
Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, is basically
twofold. Not only does the fiscal package provide aid for a military
which is itself involved in the drug trade and the furtherance of
human rights abuses, Sanho Tree said, but it also promotes an
anti-narcotics program already a proven failure for America.

In criticism of U.S. "drug czar," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who leads the
anti-narcotics strategies in civil war torn Colombia and other
regions, Tree called the proposed assistance "the first in a series of
blank checks in a war that has no end game."

"There is no definition of victory," he said. "Are we aiming for a 20
percent, 50 percent, or 100 percent reduction in drug production?
Americans have a right to know what goal (we must) achieve before we
can declare success and go home."

He also termed McCaffrey's attack plan against drugs, and the
subsequent $1.5 billion in aid proposed to fund the efforts, "simply
wishful thinking and political scapegoating to think that poor
countries such as Colombia and Mexico can remedy the U.S. demand for
illicit drugs."

Others Agree With Tree

Another policy analyst, Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for
Drug Policy and scheduled speaker at an aid package protest gathering
held Thursday in Washington, D.C., agreed with Tree's view of the
"failed policies" regarding anti-narcotics efforts.

Zeese cited claims from U.S. teenagers that "crack cocaine and heroin
have never been easier to get."

"According to the U.S. government's data, at the street level, illicit
drug prices are at all-time lows and drug purities at all-time highs,"
he said. "(These) are powerful indictments that current U.S. drug
policy is an abysmal failure.

"We can't solve the problems of drug abuse and addictions here in the
U.S. by exporting our failed policies to Latin America," Zeese summarized.

In a press release from Tree's office that included information on
anti-drug efforts from roughly a dozen sources like the General
Accounting Office, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the
Drug Policy Research Center, the contributors pointed out that
"interdiction and eradication are the least effective strategies for
reducing illicit drug use."

"The roots ... are social, political, and economic, not military,"
according to the release. "As long as U.S. users need or use drugs,
greedy drug lords will ... produce their product. As long as there is
crushing poverty ... poor peasants (will) grow the coca and poppy."

The solution to combating drugs, according to Tree, lay more with
providing "adequate resources for drug treatment, rehabilitation, and
prevention," than with guns and helicopters to the Colombian law
enforcement and military forces.

Coverdell, in a rebuttal statement faxed from his office, countered
criticisms about funding the military by saying, "drug treatment and
prevention without eradication are ineffective." He also said
President Clinton and his administration cut the budget of the Office
of Drug Control Policy so drastically as to send a clear signal of
their refusal to consider anti-narcotics efforts a top priority.

"The war on drugs cannot be won by adopting an isolationist policy,"
Coverdell continued. "We must stop the flow of illegal drugs into this
country to keep the hemisphere safe for democracy to flourish. The
future of our children is at stake."

Tree said the Clinton administration had yet to formally unveil its
Colombian anti-narcotics package, and whether Coverdell's plan would
be adopted is still undecided.