THE WORLD;
FIGHTING THE DRUG WAR WITH BOOMERANGS By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

EVER since the Nixon Administration, Washington has been
pressing Mexico to crack down on its marijuana and poppy
fields. The results have been mixed, and now, over the last
decade or so, something more pernicious has occurred.
Policies meant to push narcotics trafficking out of the
Caribbean and destroy Colombia's Medellin and Cali cartels
have produced the unwelcome side effect of funnelling drugs
through Mexico on their way to the rich American market.

As a result, the emerging Mexican cartels have grown
richer, leaving a mounting toll of assassinations and
corruption all the way from the steamy jungles of Tabasco
to the ribald streets of Tijuana. "We push the drugs
around," said Bruce Bagley, a professor of international
relations at the University of Miami, "and new networks and
new routes are established. As a result, we have
overwhelmed Mexico's weak political and law enforcement
institutions." The Generals' Turn

Just in the last couple of months, the corrosive effect
that drugs inevitably have on any society appears to have
reached the upper echelons of the Mexican Army. Two Mexican
generals have already been arrested one of them the
country's former drug czar, who had been privy to many of
the most intimate details of Washington's antinarcotics
strategies.

These aren't just any high officials, either; corruption
of the army is a development that threatens this country's
gradual move toward democracy. As President Gonzalo Sanchez
de Losada of Bolivia once put it: "When you have a corrupt
chief of police, you fire him. When you have a corrupt
chief of the army, he fires you."

Of course, there is no telling how strong the
international cartels would be if it weren't for the
efforts of United States law enforcement. Drug supplies
might be even more plentiful and purer in the cities of
North America, and prices even lower. Victories over
traffickers in the Caribbean and Colombia have brought
periodic spikes in cocaine prices in the United States over
the last couple of decades that just might have persuaded
some potential firsttime users to buy a sixpack of beer
instead.

Drugs, after all, are international commodities that
follow the laws of economics. And however the sources of
supply are squeezed or displaced, demand for one drug or
another has been fairly steady in the United States in
recent years, making supply the most important determinant
of price.

The Mexican Government would like Washington to reverse
that equation by doing something to change the continuing
American taste for illegal highs.

The Clinton Administration, like its predecessors, would
love to oblige but finds it difficult, to say the least.
Its next effort, scheduled to be launched soon, is an
aggressive media campaign to discourage teenage drug use.
Unintended Results

In the meantime, the Mexican cartels are rapidly expanding
internationally, according to the Drug Enforcement
Administration. They are linking up with coca growers in
Bolivia and Peru and violently seizing local drug markets
in Los Angeles and across the southwestern United States.

The leaders of the competing Cali cartel in Colombia
have suffered billions of dollars in losses already, but
there is little they can do since they have been imprisoned
in Colombia over the last two years as a result of pressure
from Washington.

"I have seen firsthand how so many of our programs that
we hoped would help can have unintended, adverse
consequences," said Mathea Falco, who was Assistant
Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters in
the Carter Administration.

Ms. Falco recalled that American pressure on South
American governments to eradicate drug plants began at the
end of the Carter years, and that as that policy blossomed
through the 1980's, "it alienated and intensified tensions
between the Peruvian Government and the peasants, helping
the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement grow, and that's
what is happening in Colombia now."

A metaphor, which has become a cliche in
narcoticscontrol circles, describes the problem. It's
called the "balloon effect:" Squeeze a balloon in one spot
and it billows out in another.

When the Nixon Administration closed down Turkey's
"French Connection," heroin production spread to Burma,
Pakistan and ultimately Afghanistan. When the Bush
Administration urged Bolivia to eradicate coca plants on
the eastern slopes of its Andean range, cultivation spread
into Bolivia's Amazon Basin and into Brazil. When the
Clinton Administration urged the Peruvian Air Force to
intercept planes carrying raw coca to Colombia, traffickers
began shipping their goods on the Amazon River and growing
more coca in Colombia.

"Stop the traffickers on the ground, and they take to
the air," sighed Gen. Enrique Salgado Cordero, chief of the
Mexico City police. "Control the air, and they go by sea.
It's a battle with no end."

Still, President Ronald Reagan had little choice but try
to stem the flood of drugs that was pouring into Miami from
the Caribbean in the early 1980's. Miami was plummeting
into an abyss: its streets had become a battleground of
dealers fighting for turf, its police force was corrupted
by bribes, and the integrity of its banks was threatened by
a deluge of laundered money.

The Reagan Administration unleashed the Coast Guard, the
Navy, the Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement
Administration to block the fleets of boats launched from
Colombia that made their way to Miami through Jamaica,
Haiti and the Bahamas. At the same time, pressure was
exerted on Colombia to crack down on the Medellin cartel.
Shifting Gears

The operation was so successful that panicked Colombian
drug lords first made war on their Government and then took
refuge in Panama in 1984. With the help of Gen. Manuel
Antonio Noriega, they rerouted their shipments up through
Central America and Mexico. Once the Medellin mafia was
crushed, the Cali cartel took up the slack with the help of
emerging Mexican organized crime groups.

Miami was saved, but the police forces and militaries of
Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were
all corrupted to varying degrees. Drug corruption led to an
American invasion in Panama, and now it appears to promise
years of tensions between Washington and Mexico City. And
still, for all the international turmoil, cocaine and
heroin prices in the United States keep dropping, and the
potency of the drugs keeps rising.

Copyright (c) 1997, The New York Times Company