AMERICA ADMITS DRUG WAR HAS FAILED

New Cartels Keep Surfacing, but US Drug Czar Insists the Cocaine
Supply Will Fall Within a Year

MEXICO CITY - The US drugs czar has admitted that Washington's
anti-narcotics policy in Latin America has so far failed.

Mr John Walters, who heads the US Office of National Drug Control
Policy, acknowledged that billions of dollars of investment over many
years have failed to dent the flow of Latin American cocaine onto US
streets, but he predicted progress would be seen soon.

He made a similar statement last year but insisted on Thursday that
the campaigns to eradicate coca crops and to go after drug-smuggling
gangs across the Americas would soon produce results on US streets.

'The estimate is in the next 12 months, we will see a reduction in the
availability of cocaine in the United States,' he told reporters
during a visit to Mexico.

'This is what we hope will be the first demonstration that multiple
efforts in the hemisphere produce a substantial change.'

The US government has spent more than US$2 billion (S$3.4 billion) to
train and equip Colombian anti-narcotics agents in a war against
cartels that produce and export cocaine for the US market.

Crop-eradication programmes in Colombia and elsewhere in South America
as well as close cooperation with Mexico against smuggling gangs were
supposed to cut supply.

However, so far new groups have stepped in to fill the vacuum when
others came under pressure.

'We have not seen yet in all these efforts what we are hoping for on
the supply side, which is a reduction in the availability,' Mr Walters
said.

He said the US government planned to develop a similar 'systematic
attack' on the supply lines of other illicit drugs like heroin,
marijuana and amphetamines.

Mr Walters' comments, which came just after a visit to Colombia, could
be seen as an admission that the so-called Plan Colombia has been a
failure.

This initiative to wipe out drug-smuggling gangs and eradicate coca
crops has seen the Colombian government become the third-largest
recipient of US military aid in the world, after Israel and Egypt.