DRUG WAR GOING WELL, REPORT SAYS

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

The availability of all major illegal drugs except Afghan heroin is
flat or down, according to newly released global figures for 2005. So
is drug use in the U.S., the world's leading consumer. And drug
seizures are up sharply.

No one is saying the world's drug problem is solved, only that it is
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, the
executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, based in
Vienna, Austria, wrote in an analysis of world drug trends that was
released last week. U.N. drug-trend analyst Thomas Pietschmann is a
co-author of the 2007 World Drug Report.

Some experts chide Costa as reading too much into admittedly small
fluctuations in short-term supply and ignoring grimmer long-term
forecasts. But U.S. drug czar John Walters, the director of the White
House Office of Narcotics and Drug Control Policy, shares Costa's optimism.

After years of global criticism for Americans' gluttonous appetite for
drugs, Walters said in a recent interview, "The U.S. is now being
looked on favorably as an example of declining use."

By a traditional drug-war benchmark, the University of Michigan's
annual government-sponsored survey of U.S. teens, he is right. The
study, which surveys eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders annually, found
that their use of illicit drugs dropped about 23 percent over the past
five years. The study often is used to predict future abuse rates.

Costa and Pietschmann see these developments:

Cracking Down

Colombia's U.S.-aided crackdown is aimed at drug-funded
rebels.

Morocco is following European Union's pressure.

Laos and Myanmar are fighting insurgencies and appeasing neighboring
China.

Mexico is fighting politically corrupting drug cartels

The U.S., Spain and the United Kingdom are sharing more
intelligence.

Seizing Drugs

In 1980s and 1990s, U.S. law enforcement did most of the drug
seizing.

In 2005, Latin America seized nearly 60 percent of interdicted drugs.
Top countries were (in order) Colombia, the U.S., Venezuela, Spain,
Ecuador and Mexico. In 1999, seizure rates were 24 percent of total
cocaine production and 15 percent of heroin. In 2005, seizure rates
grew to 42 percent of cocaine and 24 percent of heroin.

Looking Ahead

Pietschmann has seen favorable signs before, just 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.

This year's crop will probably exceed it.

Cocaine use, while down in the U.S., is up in Europe, South America
and Africa, and is likely to grow.