U.S. WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED, REPORT SAYS

Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, who helped supervise the
Brookings Institution study, says Washington needs to focus on
consumption in addition to targeting traffickers.

The United States' war on drugs has
failed and will continue to do so as long as it emphasizes law
enforcement and neglects the problem of consumption, a Washington
think tank says in a report co-chaired by a former president of Mexico.

The former president, Ernesto Zedillo, in an interview, called for a
major rethinking of U.S. policy, which he said has been "asymmetrical"
in demanding countries like Mexico stanch the flow of drugs northward,
without successful efforts to stop the flow of guns south. In addition
to disrupting drug-smuggling routes, eradicating crops and prosecuting
dealers, the U.S. must confront the public health issue that
large-scale consumption poses, he said.

"If we insist only on a strategy of the criminal pursuit of those who
traffic in drugs," Zedillo said, "the problem will never be resolved."

The indictment of Washington's counter-narcotics campaign comes in a
report released this week by the Brookings Institution that advocates
closer engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean. U.S. influence
in the region has slipped dramatically during the eight years of the
Bush administration, and the report suggests an incoming Democratic
government led by Barack Obama can open opportunities for better ties
and communication.

Among its recommendations, the report urges a fresh approach to Cuba,
including loosening the long-standing U.S. embargo, overhauling
immigration policies, and enhancing "hemispheric integration" on the
economic and energy fronts.

The report, which is the work of Brookings' Partnership for the
Americas Commission, offers especially pointed criticism of the way
the drug war has been waged.

Contrary to government claims, the use of heroin and cocaine in the
U.S. has not declined significantly, the report says, and the use of
methamphetamine is spreading. Falling street prices suggest the supply
of narcotics has not waned noticeably, and U.S. prevention and
treatment programs are woefully underfunded, the study says.

"Current U.S. counter-narcotics policies are failing by most objective
standards," the report says. "The only long-run solution to the
problem of illegal narcotics is to reduce the demand for drugs in the
major consuming countries, including the United States."

Zedillo cited skyrocketing violence in his own country as an example
of the damage done by those policies. More than 4,000 people have been
killed in Mexico this year in drug-related warfare between government
troops and traffickers, and among rival drug gangs. Many of the
weapons confiscated in raids and shootouts came from the U.S.

Zedillo, who served as Mexican president from 1994 to 2000, spoke by
telephone from Yale University, where he is an economics professor and
director of the school's Center for the Study of Globalization. He is
co-chairman of the Partnership for the Americas Commission with Thomas
R. Pickering, a former U.S. undersecretary of State.

Where the U.S. has had success, as in the reduction of coca production
in some areas of Colombia, those gains are not sustainable, Zedillo
said, because cultivation merely moves to other zones.

"And that way, the fight goes nowhere," he said.

The report urges the U.S. to take responsibility for stemming the
transport of an estimated 2,000 guns a dayacross the border; to expand
drug prevention programs in schools and redirect anti-drug messages to
younger people by emphasizing cosmetic damage as well as health risks;
and to greatly enhance drug courts, a system that incorporates
treatment into prosecution.

John P. Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, recently defended U.S. efforts. In Mexico to discuss a
pending aid package, Walters said a decline in positive drug tests at
American workplaces indicated consumption was down, and he said
authorities were taking steps to curtail gun shipments.

But a report this month from the U.S. Government Accountability
Office, commissioned by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), now the vice
president-elect, said the government's most ambitious
counter-narcotics program, the $5-billion Plan Colombia, failed to
meet several goals. Interdiction halved opium and heroin production in
Colombia from 2000 to 2006, but coca and cocaine production continued
to grow, it said.