America's coke-heads underwrite Colombia's misery Wall Street Journal Commentary By Mary Anastasia O'Grady 20 August 1999 This Month's News | CSN Home

When former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, last week, throngs of fans turned out to honor him. That he was busted less than a year ago for a cocaine purchase was no barrier to his elevation to folk hero status.Sports columnists merely lamented his drug addiction and New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, who funded Mr. Taylor's rehab, referred to it as an "affliction." When a few critics called for keeping the cocaine abuser out of the Hall of Fame, Mr. Taylor dismissed them as "old phonies."

One would assume from this that Americans aren't much troubled byhigh-profile violations of drug abuse laws. But in Columbia, 2,500 milessouth of New York, the U.S. government is fighting a "war on drugs" onbehalf of its victimized superstars and other American drug abusers. Theseworthies, we presumably are supposed to believe, are shoving cocaine up their noses because of a plot against them by Third World peasants.

Today's surreal Washington has the drug problem backwards. Most serious analysts now conclude that it is demand from users in the U.S. and otherrich nations that generates the production and clandestine distribution ofcocaine, pot, heroin and other banned substances. Nonetheless, trying to stem the supply, the U.S. is waging a messy "drug war," conveniently fought on Colombian soil.

The war has imposed a high price on the natives. In Colombia, today's prime source of cocaine for the U.S., the perverse economic dynamics of the drug war have given rise to both an unprecedented guerrilla movement and a reactionary paramilitary. In a poor country with an elite inclined toward compromise, an inept military and a largely non-existent law-enforcementsystem, the "drug war" has been a disaster. Insurgents have taken over some 40% of the country, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of rural dwellers. Many women and children have become refugees after seeing theirhusbands and fathers butchered.<

Colombia is contending with two nasty guerrilla groups, known by the Spanish acronyms FARC and ELN. In the U.S., some Beltway politicians talk about striking a compromise with the guerrillas in the quixotic hope that they'll shut down their $500 million-dollar-a-year racket. When FARC leaders made "peace" overtures earlier this year, Colombian President Andres Pastrana ceded a large territory to them as an act of good faith. They have responded with violence, making it clear that they are more akin to a mafia of wealthy crooks with e-mail addresses than the honest peasant idealists that European leftists make them out to be.

Entrepreneurial guerrillas are part of a joint venture; their power has been rising in eerie parallel with the expansion of U.S. efforts to fight illegal narcotics in source countries. As the Colombian government, at the behest of the U.S., attacks the peasant coca cultivators and narcotics processors, the guerrillas grow more valuable as a security force. They now prosper from their lucrative protection rackets, roaming at will through rural cocaine-producing territories.

Coca production has been temporarily suppressed in Bolivia and Peru, but now output is up sharply in Colombia, supporting the notion that supply meets demand. The most active guerrilla-dominated coca growing areas have gained inhabitants in recent years as displaced peasants looking for a way to make a living moved south to the Putumayo and the Caqueta regions. Thus, any war waged against the guerrillas there must also be waged against an entire population that is fighting for its livelihood. And it is immensely useful to the guerrillas to be able to portray the Yanquis as the enemy.

But most importantly, cocaine purchases by the likes of Lawrence Taylor fund the other side in the "drug war." As long as the demand exists, the violence will not only drag on but in all likelihood, intensify. Yet Washington's position remains firmly rooted in blaming suppliers. Only 34% of the government's anti-narcotics budget goes toward anti-drug education and treatment, which attack demand and are by far the best ways to reduce use.

"Solutions" aimed at supplier regions are moving from the absurd to the outrageously bizarre. Take for example, the plan to wipe out coca crops. By now it is clear that eradication efforts amount to little more than chasing coca growers out of one area, only to have them reappear in another. As the 1998 State Dept. report on Colombia states: "The combined U.S./GOC [Government of Colombia] eradication program had its best year ever in 1998, successfully spraying over 65,000 hectares of coca (approximately 50% more than the total for 1997) and 3,000 hectares of opium poppy." But the report also says: "Despite an aggressive aerial coca eradication program, coca cultivation increased." It adds: "Recent reporting indicates, however, that higher yielding varieties of coca have been introduced in southwestern Colombia. Accordingly, we suspect that U.S. yield estimates for coca are probably low."

The administration's response to this failure is a call from President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, for $1 billion in counter-narcotics aid for the region next year. That's up from $289 million this year, which is triple the amount spent in 1998. The new plan will include more attempts to foster crop substitution, which assumes that stupid peasants grow coca because they don't know about bananas.

The drug business is about as close to a flawless market as you can get: supply and demand reach equilibrium; producers maximize the use of capital and labor; distribution channels seamlessly shift in response to risks and opportunities. When a market works this efficiently it runs circles around bureaucracies. Says Steve Dnistrian, executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, "Where there is demand, product will get there. Demand will drive the market."

Yet the illogic of fighting supply is so entrenched that the Colombian government and the United Nations now talk of making a pact with the rebel thugs, giving them their own undemocratic fiefdoms in exchange for promises to stay out of Bogota, kidnapping and the drug business and instead practicing down-home crop substitution. Does anyone else feel like they've fallen through the Looking Glass?

In a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times last week, a reader complained that the U.S. was not really fighting the drug war at all. He wrote, " ....no mention is made of military action to bomb the cocaine processing plants, strafe the truck convoys, shoot down drug courier airplanes and sink cocaine cargo ships." At least he's logical: this is a war on drugs. If we cannot denounce Lawrence Taylor's behavior, why not carpet-bomb all of South America instead?