UNCERTAIN DRUG STRATEGY

For the countries that have been designated by the U.S. as major producers
or shippers of narcotics, it's that time of year again-time to be
officially judged by the U.S. on their cooperation in the war on drugs.

President Clinton must provide his "certifieation" report to Congress
before March 1. One has to ask: Who is the U.S. to press judgment on
another country's drug habits?

The Clinton Administration, under whose watch the drug problem has soared,
has used the certification process more broadly than its predecessors. Not
only has it decertified couldn't-care-less dictatorships like Burma and
Nigeria, but for the past twa years it has come down hard on Colombia and
last year only narrowly spared Mexico. Countries that fail to be certified
can lose foreign aid or trade privileges.

Colombian decertification has done little to change the popular use of
drugs in the U.S., but it has outraged the Colombian people, who see
America's addictions to recreational drugs as fueling criminal elements
that are destroying their country.

Certainly Colombia has responded to the process with vigorous anti-drug
efforts. More than 4,000 Colombian police officers have died at the hands
of narco-traffickers; aggressive crop eradication continues, though it
turns peasants into anti-government militants who worsen the guerrilla
problem tearing up the countryside; judges and politicians who speak out
against the cartels are constantly at risk; car bombings and assassinations
are part of daily life. Somehow, threatening to shut off the trading access
of Colombian flower growers to U.S. markets seems misplaced vengeance.

Not least there is the painful irony for Colombians of having to endure a
lecture on proper political conduct from William Jefferson Clinton.

Consider: Colombia's decertification was prompted largely because Ernesto
Samper's presidential campaign was found to be tainted with money from the
cartels. Decertification was another way of saying that if Colombians were
really trying, buckets of narco-funds dumped into their country somehow
wouldn't be used to corrupt their institutions. Perhaps when the Clinton
Administration decertifies Colombia this year, it will include a tutorial
on how to keep tainted money out of politics or convicted drug dealers out
of photo-ops at the White House.

There's no question that democracies loathe being decertified. The label
brings stigma and economic uncertainty. Since its back-to-back
decertifications Colombia has increased efforts to quash its drug trade.

But this year Colombian coca cultivation is actually up and the steady flow
of drugs into the U.S. continues. Decertification hasn't pushed Mr. Samper
out of office. Instead, he has become popular as a Colombian who suffers
U.S. bullying.

There is increasing understanding in Washington that the decertification
process simply isn't meeting its goal of diminishing the supply of drugs in
the U.S. As for the ultimate goal-reducing drug use in this country-that
cannot be met by placing the major responsibility on the shoulders of poor
countries, even if their leaders are ethically suspect. Supply will find
demand and we should start to wonder why demand is so high in this country.

Ultimately, drug abuse and institutional corruption are both moral issues.

The "Just Say No" campaign implicitly recognized that. All the
decertifications in the world won't change a single user's attitude here so
long as scrambling your brain while Latins die is thought to be morally
cool.