The US strategy to block supply has proved futile, reports MARK RILEY.

FOR the past 30 years, the United States has fought an unsuccessful war on
drugs by trying to construct a barbed-wire fence around the country to keep
supplies out.

It has spent hundreds of billions of dollars doing so, and has passed new
laws to ensure it will spend hundreds of billions more.

The approach is all about supply-side economics. You try to block the
supply to force the cost of heroin and cocaine up, pricing most users out
of the market.

But the theory has not worked. Heroin and cocaine are as freely available
on the streets as it ever - and cheaper.

Now, a few progressive politicians and law enforcement officials are
fighting against the large prohibitionist majority, advocating a new
integrated policy approach to drugs that would continue to build the fence
at one end, while trying to address the drug use problem at the other as a
health issue.

But being branded "soft on drugs" is a death sentence for US politicians.
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently fought to ban methadone clinics from
parts of the city. And he is one of the more progressive Republicans.

Despite this, officials like US Senior District Court Judge John Kane of
Denver are pressing for education, prevention and rehabilitation programs
instead of jail.

Judge Kane is one of the most prominent advocates of a trial of the
controlled distribution of heroin, along the lines of that firmly opposed
in Australia by the Prime Minister, John Howard.

"If heroin were available in public health clinics and in private clinics
with physicians at $3, you would not have any reason in the world in
Tijuana or Colombia to try to send it to the US," he said.

"I don't think we should go around like a Johnny Appleseed and throw drugs
around to people, but I think if you're going to have a war you should win
it."

However, few lawmakers agree with Judge Kane. The US is still "at war" over
drugs - and is calling in more troops to prove it.

Recent legislation passed in the US Congress has granted $US117 million
($183 million) to put 1,000 more agents on border patrols in the south to
police the flow of narcotics from Mexico and Central America. Another bill
directs $US13 million to employing another 100 agents to monitor heroin
trafficking. A further $US30 million is being spent to create five
"high-intensity drug trafficking areas" to patrol the Texas border with
Mexico. As well, a proposed bill would add $US3 billion to an expected
three-year federal anti-drug budget of $US51 billion, sending planes and
boats to help operations in the Caribbean waters.

James Traficant (Dem, Ohio) has put a bill to the Senate to send 10,000
more troops to militarise the south-west border.

At the same time, liberal States are heralding the successes of the network
of drug courts that have been established across the country in the past
couple of years. Non-violent drug offenders are directed into
institutionalised or outpatient rehabilitation rather than prison to break
the vicious cycle of drug dependency that has been proved to worsen inside
jail. This system, which claims a rehabilitation success rate of 80 per
cent or more, was the model for the drug court trial being conducted in NSW.

Advocates of these social policies say they should be seen not as
replacements for, but as complements to, the existing prohibitionist
approaches. It is noticeable, however, that much more money is being spent
repairing the barbed-wire fence than funding the new approaches.