WORLD'S DRUG PROBLEM 'UNDER CONTROL,' U.N. SAYS

New Figures Point To Success In the Global War on Drugs, Thanks to
Worldwide Efforts to Step Up Seizures and Disrupt Production

WASHINGTON -- One war appears to be going well for the United States
and its allies these days: the drug war.

The availability of all major illegal drugs -- except Afghan heroin --
is flat or down, and drug seizures are up sharply, according to newly
released global figures.

No one's saying the world's drug problem is solved, and the data on
cocaine production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia show little overall
change. But one top analyst said the problem appears to be contained
for now.

"We seem to have reached a point where the world drug situation has
stabilized and been brought under control," Antonio Maria Costa,
executive director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime,
wrote in an analysis of world drug trends released last week.

Some experts say Costa is reading too much into small fluctuations in
short-term supply and ignoring grim long-term forecasts.

But U.S. drug czar John Walters, director of the White House Office of
Narcotics and Drug Control Policy, shares his optimism.

The United States "is now being looked on favorably as an example of
declining use," Walters said recently.

Countries Credited

Walters and U.N. drug-trend analyst Thomas Pietschmann, a coauthor of
the 2007 World Drug Report, give much of the credit to authorities in
drug-producing countries such as Colombia, Morocco, Laos and Myanmar,
who have cracked down on farmers and traffickers.

The countries' motives differ. Colombia's U.S.-aided crackdown also
undermined the power of drug-funded rebels. Morocco's followed
European Union pressure. The crackdown in Laos and Myanmar dried up
insurgencies and appeased neighboring China.

The U.N. report notes that Latin American countries where coca is
grown and cocaine is produced have made some inroads on the
interdiction and eradication fronts, though the region still produced
an estimated 980 metric tons in 2006 -- no real change despite $5
billion in U.S. counter-drug aid to Colombia and millions to Peru and
Bolivia over the past six years.

In Colombia, there are indications that cocaine producers are adapting
to the crackdowns by improving yields from coca bushes, meaning less
acreage planted but more cocaine produced, according to the report.

The report also noted strong gains against poppy growers and heroin
producers in Latin America, particularly in Colombia and Mexico, and
said Mexico -- a growing producer of methamphetamines -- has improved
its control of precursor chemicals, prompting drug traffickers to
explore setting up new production facilities in Central America and
Africa.

Intelligence Sharing

Walters and Pietschmann also praised Mexico's efforts against its
politically corrupting drug cartels. Also lauded: increased
intelligence sharing -- mainly by the United States, Spain and the
United Kingdom -- with Mexico, Colombia and other drug-exporter
countries. The intelligence sharing is paying off in more seizures by
more countries, said Vienna-based Pietschmann -- especially when it
comes to coca and cocaine.

While U.S. law enforcement did most of the seizing in the 1980s and
1990s, Latin America was responsible for 60 percent of the seizures in
2005, the latest year tallied. The leading interdicting countries were
Colombia, the United States, Venezuela, Spain, Ecuador and Mexico, in
that order.

Even in countries where estimated supplies were up, as with coca in
Bolivia and Peru, increased seizures offset the production hikes,
Pietschmann said.

Overall, authorities seized 42 percent of total cocaine production
before it reached consumers in 2005, according to the U.N. report. For
heroin, the figure was 24 percent. In 1999, seizure rates were 24
percent for cocaine and 15 percent for heroin.

Cannabis availability is down, according to the study, and production
of amphetamine-type stimulants has been stable for two years.

Pietschmann, who has been analyzing world drug trends since 1993, said
he'd seen favorable signs before, but never so many at once.

He sees warnings, too.

Afghanistan's opium crop last year was so big that it offset steep
declines in Southeast Asian production, his report concluded. This
year's crop probably will exceed last year's mark, he said, and bring
new waves of addiction to the country's neighbors and to Europe,
traditionally a leading customer for Afghan heroin.

Moreover, cocaine use, while down in the United States, is up in
Europe, South America and Africa and is likely to grow.

"There's been almost no crack [cocaine] in Europe," Pietschmann
said, "so cocaine still has the benign image of a celebrity drug that
it had in the United States in the '70s."

Market Shifts

But Thomas Babor, the associate editor in chief of the scholarly
journal Addiction, said the overall trends say more about market
shifts than declines.

"I'm sure there's been progress in different parts of the world," he
said. "But the U.N. seems to be seizing on some short-term trends in
seizures and distribution. I don't believe that drug-abuse rates are
all that susceptible to drug interdiction or production shifts."

U.S. street prices for cocaine and heroin continue to be at or near
all-time lows. In the past, low prices lured new users and started new
and higher levels of abuse.

Abuse researchers Peter Reuter and Jonathan Caulkins offered a theory
for why low prices are no longer attracting new customers last fall in
the online edition of Issues in Science and Technology, a policy journal.

Whatever the price of heroin or cocaine, they said, "once a drug has
acquired a bad reputation, it does not seem prone to a renewed
explosion or contagious spread in use."

Overall, they're optimistic. Drug abuse in the United States, they
wrote, "is slowly ebbing down to a steady state that, depending on
the measure one prefers, may be on the order of half its peak."

Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet contributed to this report.