AMERICA'S COKE-HEADS UNDERWRITE COLOMBIA'S MISERY

When former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor was inducted into
the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, last week, throngs of fans
turned out to honor him. That he was busted less than a year ago for a
cocaine purchase was no barrier to his elevation to folk hero status.
Sports columnists merely lamented his drug addiction and New York Giants
owner Wellington Mara, who funded Mr. Taylor's rehab, referred to it as an
"affliction." When a few critics called for keeping the cocaine abuser out
of the Hall of Fame, Mr. Taylor dismissed them as "old phonies."

One would assume from this that Americans aren't much troubled by
high-profile violations of drug abuse laws. But in Columbia, 2,500 miles
south of New York, the U.S. government is fighting a "war on drugs" on
behalf of its victimized superstars and other American drug abusers. These
worthies, we presumably are supposed to believe, are shoving cocaine up
their noses because of a plot against them by Third World peasants.

Today's surreal Washington has the drug problem backwards. Most serious
analysts now conclude that it is demand from users in the U.S. and other
rich nations that generates the production and clandestine distribution of
cocaine, pot, heroin and other banned substances. Nonetheless, trying to
stem the supply, the U.S. is waging a messy "drug war," conveniently fought
on Colombian soil.

The war has imposed a high price on the natives. In Colombia, today's prime
source of cocaine for the U.S., the perverse economic dynamics of the drug
war have given rise to both an unprecedented guerrilla movement and a
reactionary paramilitary. In a poor country with an elite inclined toward
compromise, an inept military and a largely non-existent law-enforcement
system, the "drug war" has been a disaster. Insurgents have taken over some
40% of the country, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of rural
dwellers. Many women and children have become refugees after seeing their
husbands and fathers butchered.

Colombia is contending with two nasty guerrilla groups, known by the
Spanish acronyms FARC and ELN. In the U.S., some Beltway politicians talk
about striking a compromise with the guerrillas in the quixotic hope that
they'll shut down their $500 million-dollar-a-year racket. When FARC
leaders made "peace" overtures earlier this year, Colombian President
Andres Pastrana ceded a large territory to them as an act of good faith.
They have responded with violence, making it clear that they are more akin
to a mafia of wealthy crooks with e-mail addresses than the honest peasant
idealists that European leftists make them out to be.

Entrepreneurial guerrillas are part of a joint venture; their power has
been rising in eerie parallel with the expansion of U.S. efforts to fight
illegal narcotics in source countries. As the Colombian government, at the
behest of the U.S., attacks the peasant coca cultivators and narcotics
processors, the guerrillas grow more valuable as a security force. They now
prosper from their lucrative protection rackets, roaming at will through
rural cocaine-producing territories.

Coca production has been temporarily suppressed in Bolivia and Peru, but
now output is up sharply in Colombia, supporting the notion that supply
meets demand. The most active guerrilla-dominated coca growing areas have
gained inhabitants in recent years as displaced peasants looking for a way
to make a living moved south to the Putumayo and the Caqueta regions. Thus,
any war waged against the guerrillas there must also be waged against an
entire population that is fighting for its livelihood. And it is immensely
useful to the guerrillas to be able to portray the Yanquis as the enemy.

But most importantly, cocaine purchases by the likes of Lawrence Taylor
fund the other side in the "drug war." As long as the demand exists, the
violence will not only drag on but in all likelihood, intensify. Yet
Washington's position remains firmly rooted in blaming suppliers. Only 34%
of the government's anti-narcotics budget goes toward anti-drug education
and treatment, which attack demand and are by far the best ways to reduce use.

"Solutions" aimed at supplier regions are moving from the absurd to the
outrageously bizarre. Take for example, the plan to wipe out coca crops. By
now it is clear that eradication efforts amount to little more than chasing
coca growers out of one area, only to have them reappear in another. As the
1998 State Dept. report on Colombia states: "The combined U.S./GOC
[Government of Colombia] eradication program had its best year ever in
1998, successfully spraying over 65,000 hectares of coca (approximately 50%
more than the total for 1997) and 3,000 hectares of opium poppy." But the
report also says: "Despite an aggressive aerial coca eradication program,
coca cultivation increased." It adds: "Recent reporting indicates, however,
that higher yielding varieties of coca have been introduced in southwestern
Colombia. Accordingly, we suspect that U.S. yield estimates for coca are
probably low."

The administration's response to this failure is a call from President
Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, for $1 billion in
counter-narcotics aid for the region next year. That's up from $289 million
this year, which is triple the amount spent in 1998. The new plan will
include more attempts to foster crop substitution, which assumes that
stupid peasants grow coca because they don't know about bananas.

The drug business is about as close to a flawless market as you can get:
supply and demand reach equilibrium; producers maximize the use of capital
and labor; distribution channels seamlessly shift in response to risks and
opportunities. When a market works this efficiently it runs circles around
bureaucracies. Says Steve Dnistrian, executive vice president of the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, "Where there is demand, product will
get there. Demand will drive the market."

Yet the illogic of fighting supply is so entrenched that the Colombian
government and the United Nations now talk of making a pact with the rebel
thugs, giving them their own undemocratic fiefdoms in exchange for promises
to stay out of Bogota, kidnapping and the drug business and instead
practicing down-home crop substitution. Does anyone else feel like they've
fallen through the Looking Glass?

In a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times last week, a reader
complained that the U.S. was not really fighting the drug war at all. He
wrote, " . . . no mention is made of military action to bomb the cocaine
processing plants, strafe the truck convoys, shoot down drug courier
airplanes and sink cocaine cargo ships." At least he's logical: this is a
war on drugs. If we cannot denounce Lawrence Taylor's behavior, why not
carpet-bomb all of South America instead?