SO LEGALISE THEM?

No one country on its own can sensibly decriminalise illegal drugs. The
world could collectively, but won't. Yet suppose it did: would Colombia be
better off? Yes, says Ernesto Samper.

It is a qualified yes. He points to the huge harm that drug money has done
to Colombia. To would-be legalisers, that strengthens the case for change.

Mr Samper balks, saying past evils on this scale cannot be just swept under
the carpet. Even so, his is a striking admission from a man who spent much
of his presidency at war with the drug mobs.

That is not how his enemies see him. Barely was he elected in 1994 than
rumours flew that his campaign chest had been fattened by the Cali drug
mob. It had, he later admitted; the worse charge, which he denies, that
well he knew it, was to dog all his four years.

Yet fight the mobs he did, and hard.

In 1995 police smashed the Cali mob, and lesser ones later.

Over 200 tonnes of cocaine or cocaine base were seized in Mr Samper's four
years. Growers were assailed: aerial spraying hit 1,500 square kilometers
of coca and poppy (580 square miles -- not much by prairie standards, but
Colombia is not Kansas). The direct credit may go to General Jose Serrano,
at first heading the anti-drugs drive, and, since 1995, the national
police. But it was Mr Samper who backed the general; he who in 1996 put
through a law for the confiscation of mobsters' property -- nearly $2
billion of it, so far; and who last year arm-twisted Congress into
reinventing extradition for them.

Little thanks Mr Samper had from his main beneficiary. Because of his
election cash, he faced tireless public sniping by the American ambassador,
Myles Frechette. True, Mr Frechette refused American backing to a would-be
coup; but he refused little else. The United States for two years
"decertified" Colombia as an anti-drugs ally, and still denies Mr Samper a
visa. By any norms, let alone those of diplomacy, this was a weird attempt
to destabilise a foreign government. And it worked.

But it also did not work, maintains a resentful Mr Samper: "This attitude
of confrontation, the international "satanisation" of my government, and of
the president personally, undoubtedly weakened us in the war on drugs."

Things changed with the arrival of a very different ambassador. Yet was the
trouble just due to Mr Frechette? Mr Samper is no admirer.

But no, he says, Mr Frechette "was the ventriloquist's dummy of Robert
Gelbard", the State Department's zealous anti-drugs chief.

Both men have since gone on to higher things.

Much has gone with them. Colombia this year got back its seal of virtue.

And the United States at the Santiago pan-American summit in April all-but
admitted that its certification system achieves little but resentment. It
accepts too that drug-consuming countries must act to cut demand, just as
others must act to cut supply.

Yet two questions remains from this bizarre episode in Uncle Sam's complex
relationship with his neighbours. For all the welcome it gave Mr Pastrana
this week, does the United States really comprehend just how ugly the
episode looked to Latin Americans? Second, will drugs still weigh so
heavily in the relationship, even if the Americans' approach to them has
altered?

The respective answers are: probably no, and almost certainly yes. Mr
Samper is not alone in believing that, in Latin America, "with the
communists gone, the only enemy left was the drug-traffickers" -- Mr
Clinton's version of Ronald Reagan's "evil empire." Mr Pastrana this week
was being urged to display ever greater zeal in the drug war, not to look
for pragmatic ways of ending it.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski