Pubdate: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 Source: Fayetteville Observer-Times (NC) Copyright: 2000 Fayetteville Observer-Times Contact: P.O. Box 849, Fayetteville, North Carolina 28302 Website: http://www.fayettevillenc.com/foto/ Forum: http://webx.fayettevillenc.com/webx/cgi-bin/WebX 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Andrew