U.S. FARM SUBSIDIES CAN END COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR

Since Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine used in the
United States, Washington's drug war goal in that country is simple: stop
coca cultivation on about 300,000 acres of farm land.

The centerpiece of our current anti-drug program, Plan Colombia, however,
is training and equipping two combat battalions to fight drug traffickers.
What Colombia really needs is an American-style, subsidy-driven farm
welfare program.

Patrick J. Leahy, a member of the Senate committee that funds Plan
Colombia, told the New York Times recently, "The results of Plan Colombia
have been disappointing. After spending more than $1.5 billion, in many
respects the situation is worse today than before the Plan Colombia began."

Acres under coca cultivation in Colombia, for example, have almost tripled
since 1995, and our puny $43 million effort to help individual farmers
shift to alternative crops is foundering.

Drug warriors in the Drug Enforcement Agency have long treated the
production, processing and distribution of Colombian cocaine as a law
enforcement problem. Again and again they have tried to solve this
mis-defined problem with police and military tactics. Result - not so much
as a dent in the flow of cocaine into the U.S. The Department of
Agriculture, on the other hand, is the nation's crop control czar, with the
motto: "Why use force when a few billion American greenbacks will do the
job?" Once the secretary of agriculture rewrites Plan Colombia, excess coca
production will be seen as a land use problem calling for financial
incentives capable of pointing Colombian farmers in the right direction.

The approach is time tested. What has the DOA done in the past to entice
U.S. farmers to cut back on their production of corn or wheat? Did it spray
the unwanted crops with poisons from the air? Did it set the unwanted crops
on fire? Did it send in armed forces to destroy American corn storage and
processing facilities? No sir. Crop-busters at DOA, in league with their
allies in Congress, have been concocting financial incentives for many
decades to lure Iowa and North Dakota farmers away from the unwanted crops.
DOA knows the key is to find the magic subsidy threshold at which farmers
become pawns to Washington check writers.

Two-thirds of Colombia's coca acreage is operated as large plantations
controlled by drug traffickers. One-third is divided among two and three
acre plots operated by 37,000 small time farmers.

Because farmers are now being offered government assistance equal to about
10 percent of the value of their coca crops, Plan Colombia is failing to
gain their cooperation.

DOA, on the other hand, would offer full subsidy packages to the 37,000
small coca operators. If an acre produces about $400 worth of coca per
crop, and a farm raises four crops per year, the DOA would pay the average
farmer on 2.7 acres $4,320 a year to idle his land, or at least not to grow
coca.

This is more than double the per-capita gross domestic product of Colombia,
meaning these farmers can get rich - like American farmers - doing
something we want them to do or, for that matter, for doing nothing at all.

As for the 74,000 or so workers employed on the larger plantations, DOA
could pay them too. Four or five thousand dollars a year is plenty to keep
them out of the coca business. This all adds up to a total DOA drug war
subsidy of about $480 million per year. If we assume a three-year effort
would wean Colombian farmers from coca, the DOA coca war victory would cost
about $1.5 billion, a sum surprisingly similar to the cost, to date, of the
troubled Plan Colombia.

The DOA approach amounts to common sense. Colombian coca is headed our way
in the form of cocaine. We can either deal with it in Colombia, or deal
with it here. America's domestic law enforcement, interdiction and
international drug control budgets add up to about $12 billion a year -
much of that money is now spent trying to interdict Colombian cocaine
enroute to the U.S.

If, however, the Colombian coca trade can be idled with $500 million a year
in direct crop subsidies, we could cut our domestic and interdiction drug
war costs by three or four times that amount. Of course, the Peruvian coca
farmers might want in on the deal too - then there's Bolivia.