Source: St. Petersburg Times Author: David Adams Contact: Pubdate: 13 Dec 1997 Website: http://www.sptimes.com/ DRUGS RETURN WITH A VENGEANCE MIAMI President Clinton came to Miami on Thursday to raise money. But lost in all the frenetic fundraising activity was some serious government business to attend to namely, the drug war. The president, accompanied by his drug policy director, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, eagerly promoted what the administration says are its latest successes in battling the drug trade. But what the White House calls success, experts who monitor drug trafficking in the Caribbean region see differently. During a visit to the Miami Beach headquarters of the Coast Guard, Clinton paid tribute to law enforcement agencies who in the last year have achieved the highest number of drugrelated arrests and cocaine seizures in the nation's history. "This is an impressive record," the president said. "Thanks in no small measure to heroic efforts on the high seas, in the air and along our borders, the strategy is starting to show promising results." Experts disagree. "True, they have had a lot of of dramatic quoteunquote "successful' seizures," said Ivelaw Griffith, a political scientist at Florida International University and one of the region's top drug experts. "But increased success indicates that the problem is not going away; in fact it's getting bigger." Clinton said that in the past year, the Coast Guard and other agencies operating in the Caribbean had seized more than 103,617 pounds of cocaine, more than triple the amount the year before. He also said arrests were up 1,000 percent. The policy was working so well, the president said he had approved spending another $73million on top of the Pentagon's $800million budget to fight drug trafficking. If the war was so effective, why the need to spend more money? Ironically, Clinton's visit came only a few days after the Customs Service in Miami announced that it had seized more than five tons of cocaine in just the last six weeks. The upsurge in drug trafficking was highlighted by a dramatic latenight boat chase Monday in the Florida Keys in which a ton of cocaine was seized. Flush with excitement, local officials said the chase reminded them of the days of Miami Vice, the popular TV series inspired by the city's cocaine heyday in the 1980s. Indeed, a decade after the drug trade in the region was largely tamed, and Colombian cartels shifted their routes to the U.S.Mexico border, South Florida and the Caribbean are again awash in cocaine. Heroin is also turning up in ever larger quantities. The second time around, U.S. agencies may be better equipped to deal with the traffickers. But the same cannot be said for the small, vulnerable Caribbean islands through which the drugs pass on the way to America's 13million drug consumers. United Nations counterdrug officials say more than 60 percent of the South American cocaine sold in the United States and Europe now moves through the Caribbean. At a conference last week, the head of the U.N. Drug Control and Crime Prevention Program, Pino Arlacchi, said the impact of drug trafficking has been devastating for the Caribbean. "The sad reality is the following: Drug trafficking and abuse, as well as the legitimation of the proceeds of crime, are negatively affecting the Caribbean region in terms of health, corruption, internal security, violence, economic development and the integrity of financial systems." Arlacchi added that the Caribbean was also "the center of the world's moneylaundering business today." The evidence of devastation keeps piling up. This week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported that after the U.S. invasion of Haiti dismantled the local armed forces in 1994, the absence of an effective police and judicial system left the country wide open to drug trafficking. Next door to Haiti, drugmoney laundering is rampant in the Dominican Republic. According to a U.S. federal indictment in Miami, two prominent Dominicans funneled millions in Colombian drug money through local casinos, hotels and a national baseball team. In the eastern Caribbean, an independent commission investigating drug corruption in the tiny island of Dominica issued a report last month that led to the firing of 12 national police officers. Drug violence on the nearby island of St. Kitts has inspired a secession movement on its even smaller sister island, Nevis. Ironically, on the day Clinton arrived in Miami a number of Caribbean leaders concerned about the effects of the drug trade on their smallisland societies were leaving after a threeday conference. Many in the Caribbean complain that U.S. trade policies are hurting their small, bananadependent economies, making them less able to resist the traffickers. Their small budgets and police forces are easily overwhelmed by the wealth and technical sophistication of the cartels. The World Trade Organization, under pressure from the Clinton administration, ruled in September against the longstanding preferential access to the European market given to Caribbean banana producers. Caribbean leaders say the WTO ruling could destroy the region's banana industry, leading to economic collapse and political instability. "We want to appeal to the U.S. administration to consider the matter more carefully, to give due weight to our concerns," said Kenny Anthony, prime minister of St. Lucia. It's a shame Clinton wasn't in Miami a day earlier to listen to their worries. Of course that would have taken precious time away from fundraising. ©Copyright 1997 St. Petersburg Times. ** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **