WHITE HOUSE LETTER: U.S. COCAINE PRICES DROP DESPITE BILLIONS SPENT ON DRUG WAR

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 key senator, indicating increasing supply and
seemingly contradicting U.S. claims that US$4 billion (€2.9 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 US$135 (€99)
per gram of pure cocaine. That's way below the US$600 a gram pure
cocaine fetched in 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting
data, and near the level it has been at since the early 1990s.

During the same period, 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 U.S.
President George W. 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 US$4 billion (€2.94
billion) since 2000.

U.S. officials have insisted that Plan Colombia is reducing the
quality and availability of cocaine on U.S. streets. Colombia
supplies 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

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 impacts supply, has soared.

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, 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 (1,425
square kilometers) in 2005, there was 26 percent more land dedicated
to production of the plant used to make cocaine. The 2006 estimates
are to be released in May.

In November 2005, Walters announced that 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
the drug war. 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 senator.