Clinton Administration Fails in War on Drugs

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 22, 1999 | by Oliver L. North

If you believe Attorney General Janet Reno, Oct. 13 will go down in history. That was the day she announced that "Operation Millennium," an international, multiagency counternarcotics operation, netted 13 tons of cocaine and two of the world's biggest drug kingpins, Alejandro Bernal Madrigal and Fabio Ochoa. But Reno's press conference generated little more than a one-day story in the media. Why? Press cynicism? Or is it because her claims of success in the long-running drug war ring hollow when they bounce off the walls of the White House?

In truth, the "Millennium" story is a good chapter in a generally sad saga. The Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, FBI, Coast Guard and various U.S. military units worked well together, demonstrating to skeptics that cooperation among U.S. agencies is improving. Even Mexican authorities collaborated with U.S., Colombian and Ecuadorean officials in the apprehensions and seizures.

But the most dramatic aspect of the operation dealt with another Colombian export -- and it's not coffee. For the first time since 1991, Bogota has agreed to extradite major drug traffickers to the United States to stand trial. When Madrigal and Ochoa stand in the dock in a U.S. courtroom, it will be thanks to the personal relationships established by a handful of DEA agents with one man -- the commander of the Colombian National Police, General Rosso Jose Serrano.

For more than six years, Serrano and his Colombian National Police have waged a lonely war against the narcoterrorists who control nearly 50 percent of Colombian territory. This decade, his poorly armed and inadequately equipped 100,000-man force suffered nearly 5,000 killed and more than 20,000 wounded. And for more than six years the Clinton administration has talked about giving him support. Unfortunately, most of the support he's received has been just that -- talk. Desperately needed helicopters, funded by Congress in 1996, still have not arrived. Essential communications equipment and training, authorized three years ago by Congress, still has not been provided. Why?

Someone in Congress ought to get answers to these questions, because despite the bravery of Serrano and his police, despite the good press generated by Operation Millennium, the trends here in the United States are not good.

The most recent survey by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America shows that more than half of America's high-school students admit to using marijuana in the last 30 days -- up from one-third in 1992. More than 78 million Americans admit to having used illegal drugs -- up from less than 50 million in 1990. The number of Americans snorting, smoking and shooting increasingly pure heroin continues to rise. And methamphetamine production and consumption have skyrocketed during the last seven years. The prevalence of so many drugs, in such astounding quantities and purity, results in extraordinary violence, corruption and downright lawlessness here in the United States, in the countries of origin and in transit states -- such as Mexico.

But it gets worse. Today, more than 16 percent of convicted inmates are confined because they committed offenses to get money for drugs. Nearly 6 percent of U.S. homicides are drug related. And more than 87 percent of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons for violent crimes -- such as armed robbery, assault and murder admit to abusing drugs. The wealthiest nation on the planet, the country with the greatest liberty and opportunity on earth, is the world's No. 1 consumer of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

And what does Clinton say about all this? He dispatches Janet Reno to crow about Operation Millennium but is mute when two of the nation's governors suggest that the drug war is lost and that we ought to throw in the towel.

It's now commonplace for politicians to announce how proud they are that they have "done" marijuana. Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota suggests that the United States "decriminalize" (whatever that means) marijuana. Not to be outdone, New Mexico's Gov. Gary Johnson came on my television show Equal Time and urged that the United States become the only country on the globe to "legalize" everything -- marijuana, cocaine, heroin, the works! The inhaler-in-chief missed a golden opportunity to wag his finger and tell the nation that if legalization is the answer -- it was a stupid question.

Both governors argue that alcohol is a drug, that alcohol is legal because prohibition failed and that we raise revenues by taxing alcohol. All true. They assert that if we legalized drugs and taxed them, we could make tons of money to treat addicts. This is lunacy. The United States has 13 million alcoholics and 3 million addicted to drugs. What's the goal here -- to even the score between booze and coke? Bill Clinton's failure to use the bully pulpit to attack such insanity is the real drug bust.

Oliver North is a television and radio talk-show host and a syndicated columnist.