The United States is right to wage a global attack against
drug traffickers and moneylaundering operations that
protect their profits.

That strategy is laudable to the extent that presidents
aren't blinded by its limitations. Notwithstanding federal
drug budgets in excess of $ 13 billion, the prices of
illicit drugs continue to drop and their purity is at a
record high.

Those facts mean such drugs are plentiful, making a
mockery of this nation's program of certifying drugsource
and drugtransit countries as either allies or villains in
its global anti drug war. The administration recently
denied certification to six nations Afghanistan, Burma,
Colombia, Iran, Nigeria and Syria. The designation means
the six won't get any American aid during this period.

Some in Congress assailed President Bill Clinton for
certifying Mexico. The House International Relations
Committee rebuked the president by voting, 275, to revoke
certification and sent the measure to the full House.
Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate. The
House measure is mostly symbolic, allowing the president to
waive decertification on national security grounds. Even
so, the move shows Congress' concerns about drugrelated
corruption in Mexico.

Those lawmakers would do well to ask whether the
certification program does anything more than blame others
for this nation's own drug problems. Look at it this way:
With Americans willingly spending $ 6 billion a year on
illicit drugs, is it any wonder that so many cartels are
lining up to meet the demand, even if it means corrupting
governments in the process?

What if a foreign country decides to "decertify" the
United States for not attacking its own demand for drugs?
Washington would object, though it fails to see the
hypocrisy of its futile attack on drug policies in other
nations while doing relatively little to fund treatment and
education programs to reduce the demand for drugs among its
own citizens.

Mr. Clinton need only look at Peru, the world's largest
coca producing nation, to see the futility of his
certification program. There, farmers simply replanted
their coca crops elsewhere after receiving incentives to
eradicate 20,000 acres of coca leaves. Yet Peru is among
nations certified as allies against the drug scourge.

Four years ago, a Rand study concluded that the
supplyside approach was costly and futile. It said that
every $ 34 million the country invested in treatment
actually cut cocaine consumption to the same level as
spending $ 366 million on interdiction programs or $ 783
million in crop eradication programs.

The mystery is why president after president continues
to put so much credence in certification and interdiction
programs. The real challenge and solution lie in curbing
this nation's $ 6 billion appetite for illicit drugs.