Spraying coca crop is a misplaced priority

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Thursday, 9 March 2000
Editorial

With 3 million Americans going begging for substance abuse treatment, the Clinton administration is beset by a case of misplaced priorities in seeking a staggering $1.6 billion to help Colombia spray its coca (cocaine) crop to smithereens.

Add in the likelihood that the United States may become more involved in Colombia's nasty 40-year-old civil war -- 85 percent of the aid would be in military assistance -- and you've got the makings of another blunder in our beleaguered anti-drug policy. Our country can't afford that, either in economic or human terms.

When the U.S. House Appropriations Committee considers the doubly misguided proposal this week as part of a huge supplemental appropriations bill, it should give the administration this pointed guidance:

Don't angle for more anti-drug money to spend in faraway countries, no matter how integral they are to this country's dependence on illicit substances, until treatment has been made available to the millions of Americans going without.

Deploy a wholly different tactic to stop Colombia's cocaine factory, which stepped up production by 20 percent last year. In the country's southern plains, home to people battered by conflict between the government and the guerrillas, distribute economic aid in the form of crop substitution programs and basic services such as education and infrastructure. Coca isn't the Colombians' crop of choice to eke out an existence.

Granted, the United States must remain engaged with the world's largest producer and distributor of cocaine's raw form. The effects of that ranking on us are all too apparent.

Almost 2 million Americans 12 and older used cocaine in 1998, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Here in King County, cocaine has recently enjoyed a resurgence, making it one of the top three drugs of choice.

But two critical components of a right-minded anti-drug strategy have been consistently underfunded because they have been underemphasized: the bookends to drug use, prevention and treatment. Just compare the $1.6 billion request for Colombia during an 18-month period with the $2 billion for all prevention and treatment in the proposed 2001 budget of the U.S. Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment.

Frankly, it will be much more valuable to America's health over the long haul to spend money domestically on "just saying no" than on Blackhawk helicopters that may or may not wind up being used to the end we'd like: the decimation of Colombia's No. 1 export.