Pubdate: Sun, 15 Oct 2000
Source: Fayetteville Observer-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2000 Fayetteville Observer-Times
Contact:  P.O. Box 849, Fayetteville, North Carolina 28302
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EXIT COLOMBIA

Waist Deep In Big Money -- And Time To Leave

The most striking part of "Frontline's" public-television documentary on the
war against drugs was the bravado with which politicians drafted policies
and made speeches about a crisis that, subsequent years would prove, they
knew nothing about.

Political leaders couldn't see what was right under their noses. And they
still can't.

The war of interdiction is lost. It was probably lost in the late 1970s when
enforcement efforts were directed toward marijuana as cocaine and heroin
avalanched into American life. By the early 1980s, DEA agents were fighting
not just the traffickers, but corrupt governments protecting the drug trade.

Yet in the year 2000, President Clinton is still sending military, some from
this community, to Colombia in the name of drug interdiction. It's a futile
effort. It's a political pose. He knows it.

"Drug Czar" Barry McCaffrey promises that Colombia will not become the
United States' "new Vietnam."

He's partly right. It's not like Vietnam. It could be worse. That is, if the
U.S. military, ostensibly doing counternarcotics work to help the Colombian
government, is dragged into a decades-long civil war in which atrocities
against civilians are increasingly documented on all sides.

It's also a waste of time. Little can be done to stop the flow of cocaine
into the United States.

"The average drug trafficking organization, meaning from Medellin to the
streets of New York, could afford to lose 90 percent of its profit and still
be profitable," said DEA agent Robert Stutman, and he was describing the
early years of the cocaine interdiction. These days it's more professionally
run and more profitable. It's a larger enterprise than in the days when one
or two cartels ran the whole show. Consider, too, that Colombia isn't the
only player in the drug trade. Pakistan, the Middle East, Nigeria, and the
"Golden Triangle" have been home to major drug distribution operations.

Money laundering is harder to detect as well. A veteran DEA agent, Greg
Passic, put into perspective.

"We've got the Fortune 500 involved in our drug money laundering process. In
some ways we are getting some of our drug monies at least back into our
economy. But that's a dilemma. Now what do we do?"

That's a tough question to answer.

The Justice Department is warning corporations that their financial assets
might be seized if they continue to accept payments in multiple money orders
made out to third parties.

Drug treatment and research, possibly for medications to manage or cure
addictions, are the more aggressive approaches in the drug war.

The only significant dent in the drug trade in over 40 years has been the
gradual decline in hard-core drug use in our own country. That decline had
nothing to do with spraying marijuana fields in Mexico or with burning labs
in the jungles of South America. It had everything to do with young people
seeing the terrible toll that crack cocaine took upon individuals and
communities.

In fact the "growth" market in drugs isn't cocaine from Colombia. It's
methamphetamine, Ecstasy, and similar pharmaceuticals being manufactured in
suburban garage labs, as "Frontline" also noted. America can't send its
military to San Jose and Omaha for drug interdiction. Reducing demand is the
only way to win this war.

With any success on that end, it wouldn't be important how many poppies are
growing in the Golden Triangle. It wouldn't matter why small airstrips in
rural counties manage to stay so busy without law enforcement taking notice.

The next administration should have the courage to fight the drug war by
pushing rehabilitation and dispensing a large dose of truth to casual users
that they aid and abet a trade that corrupts governments and global finance.

And the next president should have the fortitude to pull the U.S. military
out of Colombia.

If service members are there to stop an extremely profitable product for
which there is enormous demand, they're on mission impossible.

If they are there as an under-the-radar agent in a brutal civil war, they're
being ill-used in an effort that will only backfire against this country in
a spectacular way.
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