Can’t Do Business Without Customers : Barry Allegedly Uses, Fujimori Ponders: Drug Trail from Peru to Washington

There he was, for all the world to see on video: The mayor of the nation’s capital, Marion Barry, and model Rasheeda Moore allegedly bent over a crack pipe in a hotel room. Their blurred shapes added to the tawdry texture of the scene: Two faceless people hiding the ritual that surrounds their fix.

The unreal image of a powerful public figure holding a crack pipe should also serve as a reminder of how wide the illicit narcotics market reaches; of how vast this country’s demand for illegal drugs seems.

The events recorded by the FBI camera are painful to watch, just as the issue of demand is hard to confront: We have met the enemy and he is us. This constant demand for drugs is the cause of this national crisis; the size of the cocaine smuggling empire is its consequence. If the Barry tragedy is interpreted properly, it could spark renewed interest in shifting more drug-fighting resources to drug education and treatment.

The supply versus demand debate is also being stimulated by events on another front in the U.S. war on drugs, thousands of miles to the south in Peru. President Bush wants to send aid and advisers to fight drug traffickers there who are allied with guerrillas. The proposal is in limbo: Peruvian President-elect Alberto Fujimori has neither accepted nor rejected the aid. Understandably, he has said only that he prefers economic aid to “foreign intervention.”

Maybe both the Barry videotape and Fujimori’s equivocal stance on U.S. military involvement are conspiring to send America a signal: Re-evaluate our strategy for ending this billion-dollar illicit business. Of the $10.6 billion Bush set aside to fight drugs, why spend 70% on law enforcement and interdiction and just 30% on education and treatment when even cops know that there’s only so much law enforcement can do? Make the ratio 50/50 and watch dwindling demand begin to erode the drug market, reduce profits and increase unemployment in the drug trade.