THE FUTILE WAR ON DRUGS

The crash of a United States RC-7B intelligence aircraft in Colombia has
highlighted the rapidly escalating U.S. involvement in the Colombian
government's war against that country's guerrilla insurgency movement - and
brought to public attention how blurred the line between the war against
political insurgents and the War on Drugs has become.

Numerous political commentators have noted that Colombian insurgency
movements, which had traditionally had an arms-length relationship with the
cocaine trade, have moved closer to cocaine farmers and smugglers, for
several reasons. The government's eradication efforts have been brutal and
enormously unpopular; so, the guerrillas, by providing protection to
cocaine farmers, are able to increase their popularity and share in the
profits, making their insurgency movement stronger on several levels.

Smugglers and guerrillas have similar needs. They need hidden places,
hidden routes on which to move, places to conceal their headquarters and
activities, and access to large amounts of untraceable cash to purchase
weapons and other supplies. There's a long history around the world of
cooperation between drug traffickers and political insurgents; it was
virtually inevitable that they would eventually get together in Colombia.

The de facto alliance has strengthened both the traffickers and the
revolutionaries. The revolutionaries get access to more money and better
weapons and the traffickers get allies. Until very recently it was almost
expected that Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (or FARC), the
guerrilla group, would outmaneuver the Colombian military. But the
Colombian military had recently thwarted two FARC offensives with pinpoint
strikes that were almost certainly made possible by intelligence-gathering
done by the U.S.spy plane that crashed last week.

Since there are only six such airplanes in the world, the Colombian
military will have lost an important advantage in the battle against the
guerrillas. U.S. forces now in Colombia on combined
anti-insurgency-anti-drug missions - some 160 U.S. troops and 30 civilian
Defense Department employees are publicly acknowledged - will be notably
more vulnerable than they had been.

In response to the turn of events, U.S. "drug czar" Barry McCaffrey and
others have urged that the U.S. step up military and drug war aid to
Colombia. Congress approved a $289 million aid package for Colombia last
year, but the Colombian military has requested $500 million and Gen.
McCaffrey has proposed $1 billion for Colombia and neighboring countries.

A more effective approach would be to scale back the drug war. It is
commonplace to say that the U.S. appetite for cocaine is what feeds illegal
coca farming and the guerrilla movement in Colombia. While there's truth in
that contention, it's more accurate to note that U.S. prohibitionist
polices, which increase the street price of certain drugs to at least 10
times and sometimes 100 times the pharmaceutical price, are responsible for
feeding enormous quantities of money to the most ruthless and effective of
the traffickers and revolutionaries.

Even beginning to abandon the policy of prohibition is the United States
would be a big step that should require extended discussion and debate.

In addition, elimination of U.S. pressure on the Colombian government to
continue its violence against Colombian farmers could go a long way to
neutralizing the insurgents, reducing violence and restoring a semblance of
peace to Colombia.

Drug warriors plump for military intervention overseas, of course, because
they know that prohibition in this country doesn't work and can't work
without drastic measures.

Undermining the U.S. Constitution, creating a "drug war" exemption to the
Fourth Amendment, spending ten times more more in a single year than was
spent during ten years of alcohol prohibition, seizing property and huge
expenditures on propaganda haven't worked.

Spending another billion dollars in Colombia won't stop the flow of cocaine
either, but the warriors will create the illusion that they are at least
trying.