'PLAN COLOMBIA' ISN'T PAYING ANY DIVIDENDS

Last week I came upon a story on the United Nations Drug Control Program in
which Klaus Nyholm, director of the program, reported that
American-financed aerial eradication of coca in Colombia is "starting to
pay big dividends." "Big dividends for whom?" I thought to myself.
Certainly not the people of Colombia. Certainly not the American taxpayer.
So who is reaping these dividends? As I walked away pondering this
question, I ran into Scott Nicholson, a founding member of Community Action
for Justice in the Americas. Scott traveled to Colombia over the summer to
work with union leaders and see firsthand the effects of coca fumigation in
Colombia. I told him about Mr. Nyholm's statement, and we talked about
Scott's trip to Colombia.

Let me start by saying that Scott Nicholson has got some serious cajones.
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world right now, and to
go there and do what Mr. Nicholson went there to do is quite brave. All the
lines are blurred in Colombia, and we owe a lot of gratitude to people like
Scott who go looking for the truth with their own eyes, ears and heart.

The fumigation of Colombia's coca began in the Clinton administration under
"Plan Colombia." The chemical is glyophosphate, or Roundup, made by
Monsanto, an American corporation based in St. Louis, Missouri. While the
Environmental Protection Agency is still trying to say that there are no
negative environmental impacts from glyophosphate, reality tells a
different story.

Mr. Nicholson spent two weeks in the countryside of Colombia with a
delegation traveling to areas that had been fumigated. "We went to an area
that had been sprayed in May," Nicholson said. "I looked down on a corn
field with a huge swath through the middle where it had been sprayed. All
that corn was dead." The delegation's estimate is that for every one acre
of coca sprayed, one to four acres of food is sprayed. "I talked to a woman
whose fields had been fumigated," Nicholson said, "and she compared them to
a desert. I saw them, and she was absolutely right. They were barren and
brown."

Nicholson's delegation interviewed 45 families in the Cimitarra River
Valley. Many of the families living in the fumigation area experienced
fever, diarrhea, headaches and skin rashes. "I remember one sixteen-year
old boy named Jorge," Nicholson said. "He lifted his shirt to show me
two-inch blisters all over his body where skin had died and was peeling
off." In a different area, the delegation talked to 23 families whose homes
had been directly fumigated. Seventeen adults and 28 children became sick
from the spraying. In this area, 153 acres of coca was sprayed, and 257
acres of food and pasture were sprayed, two thirds more food than coca.

Coca is quite resistant to Roundup. It can be replanted in the same soil
seven days after being sprayed, whereas food crops take months to replant.
When this area was sprayed in 2000, 40% of families grew coca. That number
is now 80% because the quickest way for these families to make money back
after their crops are destroyed is to grow coca. The roads that lead into
the Colombian Andes are few and poor. Coca buyers come directly to the
farmers, which makes coca-growing far more profitable.

"All the farmers I talked to said that they would gladly pull their coca
plants if they had an alternative crop that allowed them to support their
families," Nicholson said. "We could be spending money on road-building,
schools and developing alternative crops for Colombia," Nicholson said,
"but instead we spend billions of dollars perpetuating the problem."

We've spent $2.5 billion since 2000 trying to eradicate coca in Colombia,
and Bush & Co. are pushing for another $700 million. Since 2001 we've
fumigated over 700,000 acres of rainforest, food crops, pasture, family
gardens and of course, coca. Meanwhile, cocaine use is on the rise in the
U.S., which is where the majority of Colombian coke goes. We've been told
we'll win this war, but we seem to have forgotten the golden rule of
economics: where there's demand there's supply.

So who is reaping the dividends? Follow the money. Every soldier and
advocate of the "War on Drugs" reaps them. It has corrupted everything it's
touched. It never was a war on drugs. It's a sham and a failure. Everybody
knows it, but we go on fighting like some drug-crazed hypocrite refusing to
accept that he has a problem.

We are fumigating people's food. We are spraying poison over their houses.
It is atrocious, and it needs to stop. You can help. Start by going to see
Scott Nicholson's presentation on his trip this Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Urey
Hall. Then write letters to your senators, representatives, family and
friends. Then write some more. This war is over, if you want it to be.