THE WAR ON DRUGS

Prominent drug legalizers or decriminalizers read like a who's who of
conservatives: William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman, New Mexico Governor
Gary Johnson, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz.

Mr. Shultz, now at the Hoover Institution with Mr. Friedman, is but a recent
convert. In 1984, he sang a different tune, declaring: "Drug abuse is not
only a top priority for this Administration's domestic policy, it is a top
priority in our foreign policy as well."

The background for the Shultz conversion is well-demonstrated in "Bad
Neighbor Policy" by Cato Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy
Studies Ted Galen Carpenter, who dwells here on the more than 30 years since
President Nixon declared a War on Drugs. Mr. Carpenter tweaks the title of
his timely and instructive book in a play on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good
Neighbor Policy for Latin America in the 1930s, as he documents multiple
U.S. sins south of the border and comments on our stepped-up war on drugs:

"U.S. officials have bribed, cajoled, and coerced Latin American governments
to try to stem the outflow of illegal drugs. The result has been a rising
tide of corruption and violence in those countries and a growing
dissatisfaction on the part of affected populations with their own
governments - and with the United States. Washington's hemispheric war on
drugs is the epitome of Bad Neighbor Policy."

So, the United States plays the ugly American as it pushes its Latin
neighbors to adopt policies of interdiction, eradication, and crop-switching
from drug plants like marijuana to staples like cotton. But, it reaps grief,
including guerrilla warfare, even as the Clinton administration in its final
year granted $1.3 billion for Colombia, in what Mr. Carpenter calls "the
most ambitious supply-side antidrug offensive to date."

Colombia, a nation of 44 million, has had more than its share of chaos and
violence. Some two million people have fled their homes to duck the
fighting. More than 35,000 civilians have died in that fighting in the last
decade. Bogota's official figures say that 126,000 were made homeless by the
drug war in the year 2000 alone.

For its part, the United States has dispatched 300 Green Berets to help
train Colombian officers and enlisted personnel. It transferred 16 Black
Hawk troop transport helicopters and 11 planes for aerial fumigation of drug
crops in 2001, with another 25 smaller Huey II helicopters and 14 more
fumigation planes set for delivery in Colombia last year.

But, the irony is that the more "successful" these programs have been, the
more they have served to spike street prices in places like Los Angeles and
New York apart from places like London and Paris, and hence to spike coca
prices in places like Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Terror
and corruption in all those places have erupted on both on the supply-side
and the demand-side of roiling black markets over much of the world.

Many a poor grower in the Andes asks: "Coffee for coca? You've got to be
kidding," as he opts for far more remunerative coca. Anne W. Patterson, U.S.
ambassador to Colombia, admitted that "there's no question we are now
focusing more on terror." Congress, for its part, has tried to meet
terrorist charges with a provision in its Colombian aid package requiring
the executive branch to check closely the behavior of the Colombian army and
police. But, the check seems to have only contributed to more corruption and
violence.

Not surprising for a libertarian, Mr. Carpenter at the end of his book
charts a blueprint for peace by ending the war on drugs. He hails the
welcome, if guarded, support by Mexican President Vicente Fox for also
ending the war. In a 2001 interview, President Fox said the solution might
be eventually to legalize drugs. He tacked on a key caveat for Mexico, a
nation of 100 million, however:

"When that day comes that it is time to adopt the alternative of lifting
punishment for consumption of drugs, it would have to come from all over the
world because we would gain nothing if Mexico did it but the production and
traffic of drugs ... continued here." The continuation is of course due to
lucrative [black] markets abroad where drugs remain illegal.

Mr. Carpenter asks Washington to stop its demeaning and costly "spectacle of
alternatively bribing and threatening its neighbors to do the impossible."

Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's futile war on drugs in Latin America. By
Ted Galen Carpenter. Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95, 282 pages.