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America may be losing the war on drugs, but local drug
fighters say they can't quit because drugs are flooding
Denver like never before.

"There is more dope on the street than there has been,"
agreed Denver police Lt. Curt Williams. "But if we quit
trying, I would hate to think what would happen." Williams
and other narcotics officers offered their opinions on a
bleak congressional report Monday asserting that the United
States has wasted billions of dollars on failed efforts to
curb drug importation. Drug war money wasted In
addition, a former federal agent based in Denver said much
of antidrug money the last two decades has been wasted.

Yet despite the overwhelming statistics, a local federal
agent and a Denver Police Department narcotics officer
insisted Monday that law enforcement can't quit the battle
against drugs.

"Not to be selfserving, but we're trying to do the best
we can," said Ron Kresock, assistant special agent in
charge of U.S. Customs in Denver. "We try to put the bad
guys in jail and try to do it with the least amount of
financial impact on the U.S. government." GAO says war has
failed In a new report, the General Accounting Office, the
watchdog arm of Congress, says that despite spending more
than $ 103 billion in the past decade to fight drugs,
government agencies have failed to stop international drug
traffickers.

Heroin is now cheaper, stronger and more widely
available than ever, the report said, while cocaine prices
and purity have remained high for six years. The GAO report
went on to blame policy confusion, funding fluctuations and
a lack of accountability for the failing effort against
drugs.

Although the feds have made headway against drugs,
Kresock said it's "one of those areas that's very lucrative
financially for the violators, and there's always a lot of
people entering into it. ... You don't just wipe it out."
Drug profits attractive Kresock said profit margins ranging
conservatively from 1,000 to 2,000 percent make
drugsmuggling highly attractive to traffickers.

Williams, a veteran of the Denver police vice bureau,
said the GAO report indicates that there may be a lack of a
good, overall strategy at the federal level.

"Maybe they need a more directed effort instead of going
several different ways at once," he said.

But Williams said law enforcement has no choice but to
continue fighting the drug problem.

"The thing we have to remember is that (narcotics are)
ruining a lot of lives," he said. "It's not something we
can give up on." One retired federal agent knowledgeable
about domestic and international narcotics trafficking said
Monday that he agreed with most of the findings in the GAO
report.

"I would say that a lot of observations in the report
are valid," said the agent, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. Most funding misdirected The former agent, once
stationed in Denver, said that much of the new government
antidrug funding in the past 17 years has been wasted
because it has gone to federal agencies not usually
involved in fighting drugs, such as the Forest Service or
the Bureau of Land Management.

"A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're
talking about billions," he said.

Another problem, he said, is that the drug policies
affecting foreign governments are often warped by politics
and economics.

"As long as you do that, you'll continue to spend $ 16
billion on drug enforcement," he said.