THE DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA

To the editor:

Your Aug. 13 editorial on Colombia was right on target ("Chaos in Colombia:
U.S. actions not helping to end violence"). Not only is our government
turning a blind eye to paramilitary human rights violations, but a very
real environmental threat is being ignored. In an effort to eradicate coca
plants, toxic herbicides are sprayed from above, hitting water supplies,
staple crops and people. The aerial eradication campaign drives peasants
further into the Amazon basin, which in turn leads to more rainforest
destruction.

Colombia's civil war is essentially a nationwide turf battle over drug
prohibition's inflated profits. The various armed factions waging civil war
in Colombia are financially dependent on the U.S. drug war. For the same
reasons alcohol prohibition failed, the drug war has been doomed from the
start.

Cut off the flow of cocaine and domestic methamphetamine production will
boom to meet the demand for cocaine-like drugs. Thanks to past successes at
eradicating marijuana in Latin America, the corresponding increase in
domestic cultivation has made marijuana America's No. 1 cash crop.

Eradicating plants abroad and building prisons at home is not going to make
America "drug-free." Instead of wasting scarce resources waging a punitive
drug war, we should be funding cost-effective drug treatment. Prison cells
are hardly ideal health interventions. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war
is worse.

Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Alliance

www.drugpolicy.org

Washington, D.C.