COCA GROWERS WIN MAJOR BATTLES IN UNITED STATES' WAR ON DRUGS

While U.S. attention is focused on the war on terrorism, the Bush
administration is losing major battles in its once all-important war on
drugs in South America's biggest cocaine-producing countries.

Just last week, in separate events that would have made banner headlines in
the United States before Sept. 11, the Bush administration's anti-drug
campaign suffered serious setbacks in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, the three
countries that account for more than 95 percent of world coca production.

In Bolivia, we may have witnessed the coca growers' biggest political
victory ever. Leftist candidate Evo Morales, who is backed by coca farmers
and said in his closing campaign speech that he would kick the DEA out of
Bolivia if he is elected, was only a few votes short of becoming Bolivia's
next president, and assured himself the second largest bloc in the Congress.

While the election will be decided in the Bolivian Congress and Morales may
not become president, he will control a sizable number of legislators and
the country's most politically active Indian and labor movements. Whoever
becomes Bolivia's new president will need to reach some agreements with
Morales -- and that may include a revision of Bolivia's anti-drug programs.

"The new government is going to be very weak, and it will have to
necessarily water down key dimensions of its two-decade-old
counter-narcotics policy," said Eduardo Gamarra, director of Florida
International University's Latin American and Caribbean Center. 'There is a
new coalition of leftist, indigenous and coca growers' groups which will
have a major say in policymaking."

In Peru, the government has partially suspended a U.S.-financed coca
eradication program that had been hailed as one of the biggest success
stories in the U.S. war on drugs. A Herald report last week revealed that
the Peruvian government quietly halted U.S.-financed coca eradication and
alternative-crop development programs in the Alto Huallaga and Apurimac
valleys after angry coca farmers threatened to lay siege to major cities.

Peruvian officials say President Alejandro Toledo's anti-drug policy has
not changed, that it is only being renegotiated and will resume shortly.

Peru's drug czar, Nils Ericsson, said that "it is true that due to the
unprecedented social unrest in coca growing areas," Peru has "agreed to
stop momentarily in some areas the forced eradication program" while it
"restructures" existing plans. My translation: Unless the United States
gives more money or opens its markets to help coca farmers make a living
with alternative crops, several U.S-funded anti-drug programs will be
discontinued.

LIMITS ON SPRAYING

In Colombia, the world's biggest coca-producing country, Carlos Gustavo
Cano, who reportedly is President-elect Alvaro Uribe's choice for
agriculture minister, said last week that the new government will support
aerial herbicide spraying only for industrial coca crops, presumably those
larger than three hectares.

Cano could not be reached for comment Friday, but other Colombian sources
say the new government will replace spraying of small coca plantations with
manual eradication of coca plants, to avoid harming small farmers' other --
legal -- crops. The Bush administration favors aerial spraying.

"There is no question that all of these events are setbacks to the U.S.
anti-drug policy," said Francisco Thoumi, a Colombian visiting scholar at
FIU. "You may say that the war on drugs is being lost, but the truth is
that it was never won."

The truth is that two decades and $20 billion in DEA expenditures after the
start of the U.S. war on drugs, we are pretty much where we started.

Sure, Peru's coca cultivation has dropped to about 32,000 hectares, down
from 115,000 hectares in 1995, and Bolivia's coca crops have been reduced
to 14,600 hectares, down from 48,100 hectares in 1996, but Colombia's coca
crops have grown five-fold in the meantime, to 150,000 hectares. In other
words, South America's total coca cultivation area is about the same as it
was: We have only shifted production from one country to the next.

U.S. cocaine consumption is virtually stable, while emergency room
admissions due to heroin or marijuana consumption are at their highest
point in 10 years, according to DEA figures. There are about 96,000
heroin-related emergency room admissions a year, up from 33,000 in 1990.

Will the latest events in Bolivia and Peru be devastating blows to the Bush
administration's anti-drug campaign?

THE U.S. VIEW

"They are setbacks, but I would not call them major setbacks," said Al
Matano, a senior U.S. State Department anti-drug official. "In Bolivia and
Peru, . . . I don't think that they will ever go back to the late 1980s,
when they were the world's biggest producers of coca. There is a certain
investment that these countries will want to protect in the long term."

State Department officials say they are reassessing the drug policy to make
sure that we are not simply pushing coca growers from one country to
another. The Bush administration's Andean Regional Initiative will raise
drug eradication and interdiction budgets from $148 million in 2001 to a
requested $731 million in 2003.

Still, it looks like we are fighting a losing battle. Perhaps the latest
developments are not that tragic. If they help convince the Bush
administration to put more money into drug demand reduction in the United
States -- where the crux of the problem lies -- the latest "losses" in the
war on drugs may be the best thing that could have happened.