DOES WHITE HOUSE LETTER SHOW WAR ON COCAINE A FAILURE?

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The street price of cocaine fell in the United
States last year as purity rose, the White House drug czar said in a
private letter to a senator, indicating increasing supply and
seemingly contradicting U.S. claims that $4 billion in aid to Colombia
is stemming the flow.

The drug czar, John Walters, wrote that retail cocaine prices fell by
11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram
of pure cocaine -- hovering near the same levels since the early
1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram
of pure cocaine fetched $600.

Analysis of data collected by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
showed that after a drop in 2005, levels of purity "have trended
somewhat toward former levels," Walters said.

Price and purity estimates are a key barometer of cocaine
availability. Dropping prices are an indication of robust supply or
weakening demand, as is rising purity.

Walters made the disclosure in a January letter to Sen. Charles
Grassley, the Republican co-chair of the Senate Caucus on
International Narcotics Control. The Washington Office on Latin
America, a lobby group, obtained the letter and made it available to
The Associated Press.

Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy, told the AP that Walters would not comment on the
letter, but Lemaitre described it as "an accurate reflection of our
agency's thoughts on the issue."

Next Wednesday, President Alvaro Uribe is set to meet with President
Bush at the White House to discuss U.S. support for Plan Colombia, the
anti-narcotics and counterinsurgent program that has cost American
taxpayers more than $4 billion since 2000.

U.S. officials have insisted that Plan Colombia is reducing the
quality and availability of cocaine in the United States, which gets
90 percent of its cocaine from Colombia.

But Grassley, in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press, said
the letter is "all the proof that anybody needs" that the White House
drug office "has gotten quite good at spinning the numbers, but
cooking the books doesn't help our efforts to curb cocaine and heroin
production and consumption."

The numbers cited by Walters contradict upbeat appraisals made by U.S.
officials as recently in March -- two months after Walters' letter.

Several household and school-based surveys show that America's cocaine
consumption has barely budged since 2000, even as drug use in Europe,
which also affects supply, has soared.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said despite the existence of the new
estimates, senior U.S. Embassy officials provided him with older, more
encouraging data during a March visit to Bogota.

"We've given this program a chance to work and clearly this is not
producing the results we were promised," he said. "Cocaine is priced
as low and purity is as high as it was before Plan Colombia began six
years and $5 billion ago."

And despite a record fumigation of almost 550 square miles in 2005, 26
percent more land was dedicated to production of the plant used to
make cocaine. The 2006 estimates are to be released in May.

In November 2005, Walters said cocaine prices had risen by 19 percent
and purity had dropped by about the same. He touted the development as
a sign that the United States had turned the corner in anti-drug
efforts. Drug policy experts rejected his assertions at the time, and
Grassley called for his dismissal.

Walters' latest letter to Grassley came in response to a request from
the Iowa senator.

"When the data show a brief rise in cocaine prices, the drug czar
holds a high-profile press conference," said Adam Isacson, an analyst
at the Washington-based Center for International Policy. "But when the
trend goes back down again, the drug czar sends it in a letter to one
senator. Why is that?"