U.S. Estimate of World Cocaine Output Up 94% : Narcotics: The report indicates the war on drugs has little impact overseas.

The Bush Administration nearly doubled its estimate of world cocaine production Thursday, saying it now believes that South American traffickers could have exported as much as 776 metric tons of the drug last year.

The 94% revision upward was contained in a State Department report showing that world production of coca, opium and marijuana all increased significantly last year, indicating that the U.S.-backed war on drugs has yet to make a dent in drug crops overseas.

Among the most dramatic increases were a doubling of the opium crop in Myanmar (Burma) and a 95% boost in estimates of coca cultivation in Colombia.

The Administration nevertheless recommended that Congress impose sanctions against only Myanmar and three nations already ostracized by the United States. The report states that other nations “cooperated fully” in anti-drug efforts, a certification necessary for them to receive U.S. aid.

That claim brought a cry of outrage during a hearing on Capitol Hill, where members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee assailed the State Department for failing to criticize nations whose anti-drug efforts have proven inadequate.

Assailing what he called “distortion” and “obfuscation” in the document, Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.) declared: “The government is really not again being honest with the American people.”

Melvyn R. Levitsky, an assistant secretary of state, said the Administration would have little to gain in punishing many of the countries whose anti-narcotics efforts had been less than adequate.

The release of the report marked the beginning of what has become an annual tussle between Congress and the Administration over which countries should be officially certified as having been cooperative in anti-drug efforts.

After Secretary of State James A. Baker III recommended that certification be denied to Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, some lawmakers said they would seek to extend the list to Mexico and Bolivia, and to Guatemala, a new source of heroin.

The report found that opium production in Guatemala had jumped from zero to 14 metric tons last year, part of a trend that found the world total up by 53%.

While heroin remains the least commonly used of the three major drugs, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistant administrator, David L. Westrate, warned that the large number of source countries would make heroin “10 times more difficult to deal with than the cocaine situation.”

On cocaine, the current top priority, the State Department reported that coca cultivation worldwide had increased by 12%. Acknowledging that U.S. officials have been vastly underestimating the amount of cocaine that can be produced from raw coca leaves, the State Department increased its estimate of maximum world cocaine production by 94%--from 401 metric tons to 776.

New CIA satellite surveillance found evidence that world marijuana production is 270% greater than previously believed. Most of that increase came in Mexico, where the State Department last year estimated that 1989 marijuana production would reach 4,750 tons. In a revision that has outraged Mexican officials, the Administration reported that the total was in fact 47,590 tons--a tenfold increase.

The same surveillance found that opium production in Mexico was 70% more extensive than previously reported, with a 1989 total of 85 metric tons.