DRUG WAR DEBACLE

EVEN 'DRUG CZAR' ADMITS PLAN COLOMBIA FAILING

White House "drug czar" John Walters recently lapsed into a moment of
candor about Plan Colombia, the five-year, $3.3 billion expenditure of U.S.
taxpayers' money that was supposed to - finally - reduce cocaine
manufacturing in Colombia and availability in the United States.

As AP reporter Dan Molinski wrote, "After flying over blackened coca
fields, White House drug czar John Walters conceded that seizing cocaine,
destroying coca fields and locking up drug traffickers in Colombia have had
little impact on the flow of cocaine on American streets. But ... Walters
nevertheless insisted that Washington must stay the course with so-called
Plan Colombia ..."

Mr. Walters later caught himself and in Mexico City predicted that we would
see results, in the form of declining availability of cocaine on American
streets, in another year or so. Sure.

When it comes to the drug war, few in the U.S. media bother to question
officials who in the face of failure urge us to redouble our efforts - a
tendency that in common sense might be equated with an irrational zealotry
or worse.

U.S. officials have been promising that victory in the war on drugs is just
around the corner since the 1970s. As the Cato Institute's Ted Galen
Carpenter documents at length in his recent book, Bad Neighbor Policy:
Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, each new initiative is
launched with optimistic fanfare.

Early examples of success - coca fields burned, drug barons arrested - are
touted to show that the strategy is working, Carpenter wrote. Then reality
intrudes and the campaign is forgotten - only to be resurrected in a year
or so with a new name.

The Clinton administration launched Plan Colombia and initially touted
reductions in coca acreage in Colombia - without mentioning increases in
Peru and Bolivia. Now even Walters admits that at the bottom line -
supplies in the illicit U.S. market - the campaign is a failure.

What's the likelihood that doing more of the same will produce different
results than it has in the last three decades? It's time to dump Plan
Colombia and rethink the entire drug war.