Pubdate: Mon, 24 Apr 2000
Source: Omaha World-Herald (NE)
Copyright: 2000 Omaha World-Herald Company.
Contact:  http://www.omaha.com/
Forum: http://chat.omaha.com/

A DRUG WAR'S SIDE EFFECTS

For those who see the persistent influx of illicit drugs as one of 
America's most urgent problems, crying out for answers (that's most of us, 
surely), an event last Monday in New York could hardly have been more 
disheartening.

In January, Laurie Hiett, wife of the U.S. Army colonel who formerly 
commanded the military's drug-fighting operation in Colombia, pleaded 
guilty to laundering drug-pusher money. Now her husband, a 24-year veteran, 
has pleaded guilty to getting in on the illegal scheme.

Thus, this question: If people at or near the top of this international war 
on drugs - the ones with some of the best salaries and most clout and 
longest career investments - can be thus corrupted, what does it suggest 
about those much farther down the chain? If people whom common sense would 
see as the least vulnerable yield to temptation, what must the risks be 
like for those most susceptible to such pressures?

True, by all testimony, Col. James Hiett didn't set out to be part of a 
drug-running operation. That was a role his wife took on her own. But after 
she had shipped $700,000 worth of drugs to New York and received $25,000 in 
cash as payment, he was told about the smuggling aspect by Army 
investigators. This put him in a position no one could envy: a choice of 
loyalty to his country and the law, or loyalty to his wife. He chose the 
wife - and, not incidentally, chose himself as well.

He opted not to tell authorities what he knew. Instead, he tried to 
disperse and conceal the cash as best he knew how, paying bills with some 
of it and depositing the rest in their bank accounts. Now, he faces fines 
of up to $250,000 plus as much as three years in prison.

For years, critics of such foreign anti-drug operations have said America 
is trying to close the wrong end of the pipeline - that if it can't work 
effectively to curtail demand at home, it will never shut off the flow on 
this end. They add that the increased risks created will bump up the 
stateside street price, in turn spawning more and bigger crime as addicts 
steal to feed their habits.

It would be a simplistic approach to a highly complex problem to say that 
the Hiett incident "proves" that this argument is correct. But it lends it 
added credibility. Anything that resulted in less money flowing south would 
necessarily put something of a crimp in the illicit traffic. The growers 
and processors and shippers aren't in it for their health.

The difficulty lies in finding the best ways to effect such changes. 
Education and public-awareness programs are results-getters, up to a point. 
But when it comes to securing congressional appropriations, these don't 
have the cachet of a "war" on drugs, especially one with an international 
military component - even if that war is one that often looks unfightable, 
not to say unwinnable.

Another approach, however unappetizing to most Americans, is one that has 
been tried in England and elsewhere: Simply legalize the most commonly 
abused drugs, register those addicts who will admit to being hooked, and 
provide them with doses of known strength at small cost. With the profit 
motive all but eliminated, related criminal activity could reasonably be 
expected to go down.

Aside from societal revulsion for such a solution, though, this approach is 
not without difficulties of its own. The foremost concern is that if much 
of the stigma of drug abuse is pared away, that increases the risk that 
people will get involved with drugs who otherwise wouldn't.

It's a dilemma. If the solutions were easy, they would have been put in 
place long ago. But the lamentable yet instructive story of James and 
Laurie Hiett, which is still unfolding, suggests a need for two things: a 
top-to-bottom investigation of the operation he used to run, and a 
redoubled and refinanced push for inroads against the demand side of the 
equation. What we're doing now certainly appears to work poorly. If it 
works at all. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake