Colombian Cocaine Prosecutor Calls Worldwide Drug War Futile : Narcotics: Legalization would reduce cartels’ profits, de Greiff tells forum. He says U.S. has been trying to discredit him.

The message is that the worldwide war on drugs should be abandoned, and the man responsible for prosecuting Colombian cocaine cartels brought that controversial view here on Sunday.

The remarks by Gustavo de Greiff were the highlight of a forum on the subject sponsored by local business and entertainment leaders.

De Greiff, for the past two years the point man for the Colombian government’s anti-drug campaign, has been bluntly criticized by the U.S. Justice Department for negotiating plea bargains with traffickers, and for arguing that legalization would deny the cartels billions of dollars in profits.

“The war as it has been conducted is a failure,” said de Greiff. “Narco-trafficking is a big business and business stops being good business when it stops profiting.”

He told a Beverly Hills audience of several hundred at a drug policy forum that more land than ever is being cultivated with coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived--despite U.S.-assisted efforts to crack down on drug kingpins and to stanch the flow of the narcotic into the United States.

Moreover, he said, less than 15% of the cocaine shipped out of Colombia is seized before it reaches markets in the United States and elsewhere.

Striking back at his critics, de Greiff accused the U.S. government of trying to discredit him by pressuring convicted drug traffickers to claim him as an ally in their illicit trade.

He also charged that the United States was behind a campaign to smear Colombia’s newly elected president, Ernesto Samper, orchestrating the release of audiocassettes of a conversation in which a top drug kingpin discusses plans to contribute to Samper’s election campaign.

As a result, de Greiff said, Samper will not be able to reach plea bargains that require traffickers to dismantle their operations, without seeming like he has been corrupted by the cartels.

“The new president will not be able to move in any way but repression,” said de Greiff, who will soon leave office. “That is stupid.”

De Greiff was one of seven panelists at the forum sponsored by Town Hall of Los Angeles, a business group, and Show Coalition, an entertainment industry public affairs group.

One of its leaders, actor Richard Dreyfuss, who acknowledged his own past cocaine problems Sunday, moderated the program.

The panelists included high-profile professors, researchers, policy experts and writers who all agreed that America’s drug war--like the Prohibition-era campaign against alcohol--is misguided and creates more misery than it eliminates.

Event organizers said they invited U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and other Clinton Administration officials to participate, but none accepted. Last fall, Elders said that legalizing drugs would “markedly reduce our crime rate,” and she called for further study of the idea.

Republicans and Democrats alike immediately criticized Elders for that view, and the Administration quickly distanced itself from her remarks.

The Administration’s strategy has been to emphasize treatment for hard-core drug users, and to target drug producers in countries such as Colombia. But panelists said the Administration hasn’t budgeted enough funds for treatment and education.

An Orange County Superior Court judge who in 1992 suggested legalizing the use of marijuana, cocaine and heroin appeared on the panel Sunday. James P. Gray called de Greiff a hero for his stand on the issue.

Gray said his support for legalization does not mean he condones drug use. Rather, he said, it recognizes that “we have never had a drug-free society and we never will.”

Instead of treating drug users like criminals, he said, they deserve compassion and help out of their addictions. Gray joined the others in calling for an independent commission to re-examine the nation’s drug strategy.

Mike Gray, an author and screenwriter who is finishing a book on Prohibition, said that like Prohibition, the drug war has created massive police corruption, an exploding prison population and a rise in street violence, with no noticeable drop in drug use.