Pubdate: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 Source: Statesboro Herald(GA) Website: www.statesboroherald.com Author: Cheryl K. Chumley Note: The website has a SOUNDOFF option for readers online COVERDELL'S ANTI-DRUG PACKAGE RECEIVES HARSH CRITICISM U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga) outlined legislation in late October that would provide Colombia and surrounding regions with approximately $1.5 billion over three years for anti-narcotics efforts - -- and that has many policy analysts voicing objections. The Anti-Drug Alliance with Colombia and the Andrean Region of 1999 (a.k.a. the Alianza Act) was announced by Coverdell and co-sponsors Sens. Mike DeWine and Chuck Grassley during an Oct. 20 press conference in Washington, D.C. The Andean region includes front line states to Colombia -- Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador. According to a Coverdell press release, the package provides for $540 million to "support urgent new programs by the Colombian government," including the national police and military forces; $200 million for air interdiction programs and radar capacities; $205 million for enhancement of the Colombian National Police and the Colombian Navy; and $100 million to counter the drug trade with the development of other economic opportunities, and to improve human rights. The problem with the legislation, according to the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, is basically twofold. Not only does the fiscal package provide aid for a military which is itself involved in the drug trade and the furtherance of human rights abuses, Sanho Tree said, but it also promotes an anti-narcotics program already a proven failure for America. In criticism of U.S. "drug czar," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who leads the anti-narcotics strategies in civil war torn Colombia and other regions, Tree called the proposed assistance "the first in a series of blank checks in a war that has no end game." "There is no definition of victory," he said. "Are we aiming for a 20 percent, 50 percent, or 100 percent reduction in drug production? Americans have a right to know what goal (we must) achieve before we can declare success and go home." He also termed McCaffrey's attack plan against drugs, and the subsequent $1.5 billion in aid proposed to fund the efforts, "simply wishful thinking and political scapegoating to think that poor countries such as Colombia and Mexico can remedy the U.S. demand for illicit drugs." Others Agree With Tree Another policy analyst, Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy and scheduled speaker at an aid package protest gathering held Thursday in Washington, D.C., agreed with Tree's view of the "failed policies" regarding anti-narcotics efforts. Zeese cited claims from U.S. teenagers that "crack cocaine and heroin have never been easier to get." "According to the U.S. government's data, at the street level, illicit drug prices are at all-time lows and drug purities at all-time highs," he said. "(These) are powerful indictments that current U.S. drug policy is an abysmal failure. "We can't solve the problems of drug abuse and addictions here in the U.S. by exporting our failed policies to Latin America," Zeese summarized. In a press release from Tree's office that included information on anti-drug efforts from roughly a dozen sources like the General Accounting Office, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Drug Policy Research Center, the contributors pointed out that "interdiction and eradication are the least effective strategies for reducing illicit drug use." "The roots ... are social, political, and economic, not military," according to the release. "As long as U.S. users need or use drugs, greedy drug lords will ... produce their product. As long as there is crushing poverty ... poor peasants (will) grow the coca and poppy." The solution to combating drugs, according to Tree, lay more with providing "adequate resources for drug treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention," than with guns and helicopters to the Colombian law enforcement and military forces. Coverdell, in a rebuttal statement faxed from his office, countered criticisms about funding the military by saying, "drug treatment and prevention without eradication are ineffective." He also said President Clinton and his administration cut the budget of the Office of Drug Control Policy so drastically as to send a clear signal of their refusal to consider anti-narcotics efforts a top priority. "The war on drugs cannot be won by adopting an isolationist policy," Coverdell continued. "We must stop the flow of illegal drugs into this country to keep the hemisphere safe for democracy to flourish. The future of our children is at stake." Tree said the Clinton administration had yet to formally unveil its Colombian anti-narcotics package, and whether Coverdell's plan would be adopted is still undecided. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto