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San Diego UnionTribune
Wednesday, March 12, 1997

Blaming Mexico for trouble at home
By Jim and Ed Gogek

Like an alcoholic in denial, blaming everything and everybody for his
troubles, the United States keeps pointing fingers, accusing the rest of
the world of causing our drug problem.

Mexico, Colombia, Thailand they're not doing their part. They won't
stop sending all this cocaine for us to snort and heroin to shoot up.
It's their governments' fault for being so corrupt. Stop it, before we
smoke another rock!

Although President Clinton certified Mexico's antidrug effort, Colombia
was decertified, and Congress is mouthing angry oaths about Mexico,
planning a decertification vote of its own. It's like a tearful wife
cursing the bartender who keeps serving her drunken husband. Our drug
problem is not in Mexico or Colombia. It's right here in the United
States.

Americans don't get addicted because Colombians are growing cocaine.
It's the other way around. Colombians grow cocaine because Americans
demand it.

While Congress and many Americans are quick to blame other countries, we
still refuse to take proven measures that would reduce the American
demand for illegal drugs. So it's not too surprising that these
countries are pointing fingers back at us. Who can blame them? Almost
none of the cocaine or heroin produced or shipped through other
countries stays there. Mexicans don't smoke much crack. It's all
destined for the streets of American cities, where American addicts with
money to spend are waiting to get high.

Our government doesn't just point fingers elsewhere. We also throw most
of our warondrugs money at wasteful solutions that ignore the problem
here at home. For fiscal year 1997, the president budgeted $15 billion
to combat drugs, but only 8.6 percent was slated for drug treatment and
11.3 percent for drug prevention. The rest went to enforcement here and
in other countries.

A threeyearold study by RAND shows what we should be doing instead. To
reduce cocaine consumption in our nation by 1 percent per year, the
study said, we could spend $783 million eradicating coca leaf and
seizing coca bases in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia or $366 million in
seizures on our border and the ocean by military and civilian law
enforcement. Or, we could spend a mere $34 million on outpatient and
residential drugtreatment programs.

The same reduction in cocaine use, but vastly different price tags.
Treatment is far cheaper and far more effective.

The study also said that for just 23 percent of the $13 billion we spent
on cocainecontrol programs in 1994, we could have cut American cocaine
consumption by onethird if we spent the money on treatment for the
heaviest users. What's more, we would have reduced societal costs of
illegal drugs, mostly the cost of crime, by about $10 billion a year.

This shouldn't be news to anybody in government. At least seven major
scientific and academic studies show that treatment is very effective in
reducing both drug use and crime. One of the best studies was done in
California, also in 1994. It's known as CALDATA, the California Drug and
Alcohol Treatment Assessment. It shows that adequate treatment reduces
cocaine use by about 46 percent. And according to CALDATA, the average
drugtreatment regimen costs about $1,360.

Compare that to money spent on hightech interdiction efforts that don't
work, such as powerful radar systems installed in Virginia and Texas to
intercept cocaine shipments over Mexico and the Caribbean. This system
has a blind spot over northern and central Mexico and sees very little
of the Pacific Ocean, so that's where drug smugglers fly. U.S. drug
agents say the radar system doesn't help much. Its cost: $150 million to
build and $1,500 an hour to operate. That could pay for treatment for
110,000 addicts, plus another one for each hour it operates.

Yet Congress and too many other Americans ignore this reality. Instead,
like a drunk on a bar stool blaming the rest of the world for all his
problems, they bluster about Mexico and Colombia, demanding that these
countries clean up their corruption so Americans won't be tempted to use
so much cocaine. If that's our nation's drug policy, then we agree with
Latin American critics: Es muy absurdo.

JIM GOGEK is a San Diego UnionTribune editorial writer. ED GOGEK is a
Phoenix psychiatrist.