Pubdate: Wed, 06 Dec 2000
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2000, Newsday Inc.
Contact:  (516)843-2986
Website: http://www.newsday.com/
Section: Viewpoints
Page: A38

NEXT PRESIDENT SHOULDN'T WIDEN COLOMBIA DRUG WAR

President Bill Clinton's $1.3-billion anti-drug aid to Colombia was never
a very good idea. And he's planning to make it much worse by expanding
"Plan Colombia" -and the military cooperation that goes along with it-to
Colombia's neighbors. That would turn it into a multi-billion-dollar
debacle.

Whoever is the next president-and both Al Gore and George W. Bush approved
of the initial aid package to Colombia-should take a long, hard look at it
and its implications.

The Clinton administration argues that Plan Colombia should be expanded to
prevent the spillover effect of cracking down successfully on Colombia's
drug operations and the guerrilla war that feeds on them. Neighbors like
Ecuador, Panama and Peru say that drug growers and processors pushed out of
Colombia would relocate across their borders, bringing paramilitary groups
and political turmoil.

In fact, White House planners now say that the drug war in Latin America
was never a pure Colombian issue but should always have been seen in the
context of the Andean region's political and economic problems. That may be
so, but that's not how the Colombia Plan was sold to Congress.

If anything, the proposed expansion of the antidrug plan is a tacit
admission of the futility of efforts to choke off the production of drugs.
It's like trying to squeeze water; production simply shifts to where there
is less resistance. If Colombia clamps down, Ecuador will start getting
cultivators and processors. If Ecuador fights them, the drug makers will
shift to Panama or Bolivia. Ultimately, it's a losing battle.

The key is to reduce the prodigious demand for illicit drugs in the United
States. That's what drives production. It's elementary economics. As long
as demand for narcotics is steady or growing in the United States, there
will always be producers ready to replant fields and relocate processing
plants wherever they can, and to bring armed thugs along with them for
security. It's a never-ending and futile round-robin that no amount of aid,
economic or military, to foreign nations can solve.
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