Pubdate: Fri, 30 Mar 2001
Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/655
Author: Bill Steigerwald

GOING ON A BAD TRIP

It doesn't take much anymore to demonstrate the idiocy, waste and 
immorality of the government's 30-year war on (some) drugs.

Just watching "Traffic" -- a much better than average Hollywood 
message-movie -- is enough.

But "Traffic" never takes us to bloody Colombia, which supplies more 
than two-thirds of America's cocaine, and which Rolling Stone warns 
in a piece called "The Great American Quagmire" may soon become our 
next Vietnam.

Colombia's civil war, as New York Times writer Tina Rosenberg 
explains in the April 12 issue of Rolling Stone, is essentially a 
high-stakes turf war between the world's nastiest drug gangs. Instead 
of the Bloods and Cripps shooting it out on the corner, however, 
Colombia has armies of Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary 
fighting in the jungle.

Both are fighting each other and/or the government over control of 
Colombia's coca fields, which provide them with all the money they 
need to continue terrorizing and massacring the innocent civilians 
caught in the middle.

But never fear. America's drug warriors -- who at home can't stop 
heroin from making it to the lockers of suburban high schools -- have 
come to Colombia's rescue with "Plan Colombia."

It sounds like a venerable mutual fund. But it is really $1.3 billion 
worth of U.S. helicopters, training and several hundred non-uniformed 
advisors who are being sent to help Colombia's hapless government 
wipe out the coca plants and cocaine labs.

"Cocaine Chaos," in the final issue of George, offers an up-close 
tour of the coca farms and drug labs of backwater Colombia. It too 
comes to the only conclusion a drug-unimpaired mind can come to: Plan 
Colombia is going to be one big waste of $1.3 billion.

True, the money is a drop in the federal bucket. But as Rosenberg 
points out, no one in America -- including the chicken politicians of 
both parties who approved Plan Colombia almost unanimously lest they 
be accused of being soft on drugs -- thinks it'll work. (First clue: 
Colombia is bigger than Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma combined.)

Even if it does work, however, the coca fields and labs will move 
back to Peru and Bolivia, where most of them used to be a few years 
ago until they were "successfully" chased out with American help.

Plan Colombia is essentially an overseas application of American 
anti-narcotic policies that have failed at home, a point which, 
though never made, is implicit in World Press Review's April cover 
package on the global drug scene, "Futile Fire: On the Drug War's 
Front Lines."

Drawn from newspapers and magazines in France, Canada, Mexico, 
Colombia, Scotland, Italy and Hong Kong, the articles show the war on 
(some) drugs has become a World War from Mexico to China.

A LeMonde article on Plan Colombia agrees with Rolling Stone's 
skeptical pessimism. The Gazette of Montreal also sees another 
Vietnam coming in Colombia.

A Mexico City newsmagazine argues Mexico is doing its best to thwart 
drug trafficking but that it is a victim of "Human weakness: 
compulsion, evasion, the search for instant gratification." That's 
one way of describing the universal desire/need for humans to alter 
their own consciousness.

Reading these articles isn't as exciting as watching "Traffic." But 
they prove one thing: The demand for drugs is not a flaw unique to 
the American character. It's global and no country, even 
near-totalitarian ones like China, is able to keep the supply from 
getting in to satisfy it.

Bill Steigerwald is an associate editor and writer at the Pittsburgh 
Tribune-Review. He has written a weekly column about magazines for 
the Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Trib since 
1987.
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