Pubdate: Tue, 23 Sep 2003
Source: Montana Kaimin (U of MT Edu)
Copyright: 2003 Montana Kaimin
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/1387
Website: http://www.kaimin.org
Author: David Nolt, Montana Kaimin
Note: David Nolt is a senior in photojournalism.

'PLAN COLOMBIA' ISN'T PAYING ANY DIVIDENDS

Last week I came upon a story on the United Nations Drug Control Program in 
which Klaus Nyholm, director of the program, reported that 
American-financed aerial eradication of coca in Colombia is "starting to 
pay big dividends." "Big dividends for whom?" I thought to myself. 
Certainly not the people of Colombia. Certainly not the American taxpayer. 
So who is reaping these dividends? As I walked away pondering this 
question, I ran into Scott Nicholson, a founding member of Community Action 
for Justice in the Americas. Scott traveled to Colombia over the summer to 
work with union leaders and see firsthand the effects of coca fumigation in 
Colombia. I told him about Mr. Nyholm's statement, and we talked about 
Scott's trip to Colombia.

Let me start by saying that Scott Nicholson has got some serious cajones. 
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world right now, and to 
go there and do what Mr. Nicholson went there to do is quite brave. All the 
lines are blurred in Colombia, and we owe a lot of gratitude to people like 
Scott who go looking for the truth with their own eyes, ears and heart.

The fumigation of Colombia's coca began in the Clinton administration under 
"Plan Colombia." The chemical is glyophosphate, or Roundup, made by 
Monsanto, an American corporation based in St. Louis, Missouri. While the 
Environmental Protection Agency is still trying to say that there are no 
negative environmental impacts from glyophosphate, reality tells a 
different story.

Mr. Nicholson spent two weeks in the countryside of Colombia with a 
delegation traveling to areas that had been fumigated. "We went to an area 
that had been sprayed in May," Nicholson said. "I looked down on a corn 
field with a huge swath through the middle where it had been sprayed. All 
that corn was dead." The delegation's estimate is that for every one acre 
of coca sprayed, one to four acres of food is sprayed. "I talked to a woman 
whose fields had been fumigated," Nicholson said, "and she compared them to 
a desert. I saw them, and she was absolutely right. They were barren and 
brown."

Nicholson's delegation interviewed 45 families in the Cimitarra River 
Valley. Many of the families living in the fumigation area experienced 
fever, diarrhea, headaches and skin rashes. "I remember one sixteen-year 
old boy named Jorge," Nicholson said. "He lifted his shirt to show me 
two-inch blisters all over his body where skin had died and was peeling 
off." In a different area, the delegation talked to 23 families whose homes 
had been directly fumigated. Seventeen adults and 28 children became sick 
from the spraying. In this area, 153 acres of coca was sprayed, and 257 
acres of food and pasture were sprayed, two thirds more food than coca.

Coca is quite resistant to Roundup. It can be replanted in the same soil 
seven days after being sprayed, whereas food crops take months to replant. 
When this area was sprayed in 2000, 40% of families grew coca. That number 
is now 80% because the quickest way for these families to make money back 
after their crops are destroyed is to grow coca. The roads that lead into 
the Colombian Andes are few and poor. Coca buyers come directly to the 
farmers, which makes coca-growing far more profitable.

"All the farmers I talked to said that they would gladly pull their coca 
plants if they had an alternative crop that allowed them to support their 
families," Nicholson said. "We could be spending money on road-building, 
schools and developing alternative crops for Colombia," Nicholson said, 
"but instead we spend billions of dollars perpetuating the problem."

We've spent $2.5 billion since 2000 trying to eradicate coca in Colombia, 
and Bush & Co. are pushing for another $700 million. Since 2001 we've 
fumigated over 700,000 acres of rainforest, food crops, pasture, family 
gardens and of course, coca. Meanwhile, cocaine use is on the rise in the 
U.S., which is where the majority of Colombian coke goes. We've been told 
we'll win this war, but we seem to have forgotten the golden rule of 
economics: where there's demand there's supply.

So who is reaping the dividends? Follow the money. Every soldier and 
advocate of the "War on Drugs" reaps them. It has corrupted everything it's 
touched. It never was a war on drugs. It's a sham and a failure. Everybody 
knows it, but we go on fighting like some drug-crazed hypocrite refusing to 
accept that he has a problem.

We are fumigating people's food. We are spraying poison over their houses. 
It is atrocious, and it needs to stop. You can help. Start by going to see 
Scott Nicholson's presentation on his trip this Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Urey 
Hall. Then write letters to your senators, representatives, family and 
friends. Then write some more. This war is over, if you want it to be.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake