Basic shift needed in war on illicit drugs: current efforts have not stanched the flow

National Catholic Reporter, March 8, 1996 by Coletta Youngers

The nomination of Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey as the nation's "drug czar" may take the steam out of recent Republican attacks on President Clinton for abandoning the war on drugs. Presently commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, McCaffrey oversees the U.S. military's counternarcotics operations in Latin America. He boasts an impressive record of service to the United States.

What is needed, however, to tackle the issues of drug abuse and drug-related violence is a fundamental shift in U.S. anti-narcotics policies away from military and law enforcement efforts that have had little, if any, impact on the supply of illicit drugs coming into the United States.

American taxpayers provide approximately $3 billion a year for border and international drug-control programs. Despite this massive outlay--one-quarter of the annual drug budget--there is no solid evidence that less drugs are crossing U.S. borders. While. prices fluctuate, illicit drugs remain as plentiful as ever. McCaffrey himself is skeptical, noting in a Jan. 11 presentation in Washington that U.S. international antinarcotics efforts have yet to make a dent in the drug supply.

The Clinton administration has prioritized antidrug efforts in the so-called source countries of Peru, Bolivia and Colombia where-the coca leaves used for processing cocaine are grown. Yet, according to the administration's own statistics, the number of metric tons of coca leaf produced between 1989 and 1994 remained essentially stable, decreasing a mere 1.03 percent.

Even more sobering, a Rand Graduate School study by Kevin Jack Riley indicates that coca is currently cultivated on less than 1 percent of the land where it could be grown in Bolivia and Peru. Some Andean analysts estimate that at most 2 percent of the cocaine base (semi-finished raw material) leaving Peru and Bolivia is interdicted.

International supply-side efforts are in fact, doomed to failure. There is simply too much land available for coca production, too many poor people willing to take the risk of becoming involved in the drug trade and too many foreign economies dependent on narcodollars. Drug production is like a balloon: Squeezing it in one area merely causes it to pop up in another. The dismantling of the Medelin cartel led to the rise of the Cali cartel. Cali's demise fed the boom of Mexican drug lords, and so on.

What McCaffrey failed to note is that U.S. international narcotics efforts may be doing more harm than good. In Peru and Colombia, the U.S. government has allied itself with two of the region's most brutal military and police forces, fueling human rights violations. In Bolivia, U.S. insistence that coca-eradication goals be met before U.S. economic assistance moves forward has exacerbated social unrest and political upheaval. Conflict between antinarcotics forces and coca growers last year left seven dead, including a 6-month-old baby and a 13-year-old girl, scores wounded and hundreds arrested.

As CIA Director John Deutch and other high-level U.S. officials visited Bolivia recently, several hundred people were detained by antinarcotics police in massive roundups at legal coca markets and surrounding areas. Those detained included school teachers, community-leaders and even children. Some of those detained may be guilty of illegal activities: most however. are Door peasants in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragically, the approximately 5,500 hectares of coca eradicated in Bolivia last year is a drop in the bucket, given the hundreds of thousands of hectares of coca growing in the Andean region.

McCaffrey's nomination sends a particularly troubling message of support for the dangerous trend of ceding civilian control over law enforcement efforts.

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which codifies the separation of police and military roles--and prohibits the U.S. military from enforcing civil law--is being chipped away in the name of combating drug abuse. In Latin America, civilian governments are finally taking root after decades of military rule. Their efforts to keep restive militaries in the barracks and prevent their meddling in problems of internal public order are undermined by U.S. insistence that military and intelligence-gathering institutions play a role in counternarcotics operations.

Continuing to blame foreign countries and to wage war on drugs may score political points, but only a real shift in resources and priorities at home will put us on the road to recovery.