IT'S TIME TO ADMIT THE DRUG WAR HAS FAILED

As noted in your June 24 editorial ("Caution for Colombia"), the United
States has good reason to be wary of increasing military aid to Colombia.
The various armed factions waging civil war in Colombia are financially
dependent on the drug war. U.S.-funded eradication efforts only make drug
trafficking more profitable by limiting supply while demand for drugs
remains constant. Instead of wasting resources waging a supply-side war
abroad, we should be funding cost-effective treatment here at home.

As long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be a supply. Cut off the
flow of cocaine and domestic methamphetamine production will boom. 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. The drug war has been doomed from the start.

Eradicating plants abroad and building prisons at home is not going to make
the United States "drug-free." It's time to declare peace in the failed
drug war and begin treating all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the
public health problem it is. Prison cells and criminal records are hardly
ideal health interventions. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

ROBERT SHARPE Program Officer Drug Policy Alliance Washington, D.C.