TIME TO ERADICATE FAILED COCA POLICY

President Obama says he is determined to cut the federal deficit in
half, so I have an idea that will start saving millions of dollars
right now: Shut down Plan Colombia. To date it has wasted about $6 billion.

Over the past few weeks, senior Colombian officials have been
flooding Washington, lobbying everyone they can find to renew federal
funding for this ridiculous enterprise. One of those officials, Vice
President Francisco Santos, spoke to The Chronicle's editorial board.
"So far," he said, "we have not heard of any changes to Plan
Colombia." That's too bad.

The program began in 1999, under President Clinton, and it seemed to
make sense at the time. The United States deployed a small air force
in Colombia, 82 aircraft, and began spraying coca plants with a
non-toxic herbicide, while also helping Colombia fight insurgents and
shut down processing plants that use coca leaves to produce cocaine.
Back then, Colombian traffickers had 463,322 acres of coca-plant
cultivation. From that, they produced 90 percent of the world's cocaine.

After 10 years of eradication efforts, Columbia now has more than
575,750 acres of coca-plant cultivation - an almost 25 percent
increase! The United Nations reports that cultivation increased by 27
percent over the past year, and Colombia still produces 90 percent of
the world's cocaine. So what gives?

Over the years, Plan Colombia officials have released perfectly
believable statistics showing that they have eradicated many hundreds
of thousands of acres. But the simple truth is, as spray planes kill
coca plants, the traffickers simply plant new bushes in different
parts of the country. Plan Colombia just can't keep up.

We have given these drug-enforcement teams a decade to find an
approach that works. They have failed, probably because there is no
way to solve this problem as long as demand for cocaine remains
strong, and production profits remain staggeringly high.

Meanwhile, Plan Colombia has become an expensive laughingstock. And
while it has not achieved its goal, the effort has spawned ancillary
violence. As traffickers are forced to move their work to different
parts of the country, they push into provinces that have not been
players in Colombia's narco-trafficking culture. Suddenly, relatively
peaceful areas become violent. People die.

In Narino province last month, insurgent traffickers massacred
indigenous people whom they had accused of being army informants.
Narino, a quiet, heavily forested area just a few years ago, now is
estimated to have almost 50,000 acres of coca plants. It is a violent
drug-war zone. A few days ago, authorities seized 5.7 tons of cocaine there.

I asked Vice President Santos about this. Even as he stoutly defended
Plan Colombia, he could only nod as I described the violent change
that has come to Narino.

I traveled to Bogota in 2005, to write about Plan Colombia. Back
then, the statistics were just as bleak. Colombian and American
officials said they were working to find a new approach. A senior
State Department official from the office that runs this program told
me: "Give us another year or so and see if there is any effect."

OK, we've given you four years. Nothing has changed. Even officials
at the United Nations, who don't look at this issue regularly, say
they are appalled.

"The increase in coca cultivation in Colombia is a surprise and
shock," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crime, said in a recent statement. "A surprise because it comes at a
time when the Colombian government is trying so hard to eradicate
coca; a shock because of the magnitude of cultivation."

It's time to shut the program down.

Of course, Vice President Santos initially disagreed. He came up with
a novel and, I should say, desperate explanation for the increase in
coca cultivation.

"I think when the Drug Enforcement Administration first came in to
measure the coca, there was a lot more coca there than they thought.
I would say there was double the amount of coca there than what they
had counted."

OK, the cocaine flooding the Western world is a statistical anomaly.
In Britain over the past year, cocaine has become so readily
available that the price fell by 2.5 percent.

Pressed, Santos acknowledged that Colombia could manage the program
on its own. "That's not the official position," he said. "But I have
no doubt we can do it."

So, let them.