Losing the Drug Fight

Despite some recent highly publicized successes, the Reagan Administration’s so-called War on Drugs remains at best a stalemate--especially along its most important front, in Latin America.

Last week U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh announced the end of a month-long cooperative effort by 30 nations against international drug traffickers with results that look impressive on paper: the seizure of 11 tons of cocaine and $3.8 million in cash, the arrest of 1,200 drug suspects and the destruction of thousands of coca-leaf plants, hundreds of tons of marijuana, cocaine laboratories and seven clandestine air strips used by drug smugglers. He and other Administration law-enforcement officials claim that the campaign’s results are proof of what is being accomplished by increased international cooperation to limit the illicit drug trade.

All well and good. But there also were indications last week that the international drug cartel’s losses barely made a dent in its highly profitable business. (The most recent government estimates of the gross profits are $100 billion a year.) From Bolivia, Times correspondent William Long reported on the problems that that nation’s government has in persuading peasants who have traditionally relied on coca-leaf cultivation for their livelihood to give up the crop. From Brazil, the New York Times reported that cocaine barons have moved their operations into that country, which had until recently been spared the ravages of corruption, organized crime and violence that drug trafficking breeds. From Peru, the Christian Science Monitor reported that coca-leaf production has become so widespread in the Upper Amazon Basin, where it had never been practiced before, that it is rapidly becoming an ecological problem, contributing to the deforestation and pollution of the Peruvian Amazon.

The only conclusion we can draw is that--regardless of the time, money and manpower being devoted to attack narcotics trafficking as a police problem--the dirty business is thriving. It does so precisely because it is a business, and like any business it succeeds by responding to one of the fundamental laws of economics--supply and demand. As long as there is a demand for illegal drugs like cocaine, there will be hustlers who are ready to supply it. Whether their work is done in the jungles and highlands of South America, at the many transshipment points in Mexico and the Caribbean or on the streets of Los Angeles and New York, there are too many people who are making too much money selling illegal drugs for the police to prevail.

This is why the real answer to the problems that are posed by cocaine and other illegal drugs lies not in cutting off the supply but in limiting the demand. The Reagan Administration began its anti-coca-leaf campaign in Bolivia by sending in U.S. troops and helicopters. To its credit, the U.S. government has now agreed to provide $125 million in foreign-aid funds that will help Bolivian farmers grow crops other than coca leaves, which have been cultivated in the Andes since 2000 BC. But the next U.S. President must also put more money into drug education and treatment programs in this country--an area in which the Reagan White House fell short.

Private institutions must also be tougher on drug abusers. Last week the National Football League suspended one of its top players, Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants, for cocaine abuse and ruled that he cannot return to the team until he completes a drug-treatment program. But this is the second time that Taylor, a highly visible public figure, has been suspended for drug abuse. The league would have made a more powerful example of Taylor if it had suspended him for the entire season, or even for life. Until drug abusers pay stiff penalties, cocaine and similar substances will be considered socially acceptable by too many people in this country.

The United States has used up much diplomatic good will in pressuring friendly governments in Latin America to cooperate with our anti-drug campaigns. Many--like Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico--cooperate despite considerable danger to their own police and military personnel and even their political leaders. It is time for political leaders in this country to begin doing more to control drug demand in their own back yard. We must put as much energy into getting consumers in the richest nation on Earth to stop buying narcotics as we do into discouraging peasants in some of the world’s poorest nations to stop producing them.