DRUG WAR'S TALLY

Some Gains, Plenty Of Setbacks - Surprise, We Remain Stalemated At Best

As America's drug warriors continue their relentless fight to stop the
unstoppable, the latest edition of the annual International Narcotics
Control Strategy Report offers a sobering reminder of just how fruitless
their mission can be.

Though the report's own verbiage struck an upbeat tone - "U.S.
international counternarcotics efforts kept the drug trade on the defensive
in 2001," it said - the data itself revealed tentative gains on some fronts
offset by setbacks in other drug-producing nations.

Among the reports findings, released in Washington on Friday:

More than 200,000 acres of coca, the crop used in producing cocaine, were
sprayed in Colombia last year - almost twice as much as in 2000 - which
Colombia's government portrayed as a dramatic decrease in coca cultivation,
but the U.S. State Department acknowledged still probably allowed for a
year-on-year increase in production.

Opium poppy cultivation in Mexico - a major supplier of heroin to the
United States - almost tripled last year compared with 2000.

There was a "vast reduction" in poppy cultivation in Pakistan, enabling the
country to essentially achieve its goal of eliminating opium production
only a year behind schedule, but right next-door in recently liberated
Afghanistan, farmers took advantage of the collapse of the Taliban militia
last November to resume poppy cultivation following a Taliban ban on it.
(The most aggressive recultivation occurred in areas controlled by U.S.
allies, the Northern Alliance.)

Peru's highly successful coca eradication program, which reduced the number
of acres planted with coca, was tempered by "record price levels for coca
in these areas during 2001 ... endangering the progress made since 1995."
Moreover, the report goes on to note, "reports of poppy cultivation are
increasing at an alarming rate."

In Bolivia, after a successful coca eradication program in the final years
of the last decade, there was a slowdown in 2001, resulting in increased
production.

Pretty demoralizing. What gives? Could it be that trying to stop the supply
of illegal drugs amid unabated demand really is like trying to stop the
Arkansas River with your bare hands?

We Americans pride ourselves on our ability to win wars, but this war is,
in a very real sense, one on our own people. Not only insofar as many
Americans die annually in the drug war, but also inasmuch as our own habits
are driving the drug trade.

However many military advisers and helicopter gunships we loan beleaguered
countries like Colombia, it is unlikely to stem the tide.

So long as the world's richest nation is willing to buy, other nations will
find a way to sell. Isn't it time to shift tack?