U.S.'S PLAN COLOMBIA IS WORKING TO REDUCE DRUGS

Washington -- The Oct. 12 editorial "Sliding into Colombia's morass"
ignores overwhelming evidence of Plan Colombia's success and cites
inaccurate information regarding U.S. counterdrug policy in the region. The
assertion that coca cultivation in Colombia has simply "just moved from one
place to another" is false. The U.S.-funded aerial eradication campaign
against coca--the raw ingredient for cocaine--has produced a dramatic 33
percent decline in the past two years alone. In fact overall coca
cultivation in the Andean region (Colombia, Bolivia and Peru) has also
declined by 22 percent since 2001, dispelling the so-called "balloon
effect" theory, which implies that we cannot make overall reductions in the
supply of illegal drugs.

In Chicago more than 60 percent of men arrested for domestic violence
tested positive for cocaine. With our help and the support of the U.S.
Congress, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe is making progress combating
the same narcoterrorist groups that export these dangerous, addictive
poisons to Chicago and the rest of our nation. This so-called "failing
enterprise" has also contributed to a huge drop in murders, terror attacks
and kidnappings of innocent people in Colombia. It is crucial to note that
U.S. personnel in Colombia do not engage in combat. They instead provide
training to human rights-vetted counterdrug and counterterrorism units in
Colombia.

To say that "we have not made a dent" in the drug problem is disputed by
the fact that over the past two years, overall drug use among young people
in America declined by 11 percent. This includes cocaine use. Overall drug
use in America since 1979 has also dropped by more than 50 percent. Indeed
there is clear evidence that when we work to reduce the demand and supply
of illegal drugs, the hemispheric drug problem gets smaller.

Rafael Lemaitre

Deputy press secretary

White House Drug Policy Office