Drug War Appears to Make Little Dent in Supply

For Oscar Sena, the difference between growing the coca used to make cocaine and stopping production of the illegal crop is clear: “My son is second in his eighth-grade class,” he said. “If it weren’t for coca, he would be the second-best shoeshine boy in Miraflores,” Colombia’s coca capital.

For thousands of South American farmers like Sena, growing the raw material for cocaine is the only way they can give their children a better life. So, even when crop-dusters spray their coca bushes with herbicide, the farmers replant them.

According to a recent U.S. General Accounting Office study, over the seven years that began in 1988, “farmers planted new coca faster than existing crops were eradicated.”

That U.S. report, along with a study by a Colombian government drug advisor, supports with numbers what farmers like Sena have been saying for years.

Despite costing billions of dollars and half a dozen lives--including that of one American pilot--over seven years, international drug eradication efforts have not reduced the supply of narcotics, according to the reports.

“Illegal drugs still flood the United States,” the GAO found.

“In fact,” according to the U.S. government report, “between 1988 and 1995, illegal drug cultivation and drug-related activities have increased throughout South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and other countries.”

Further, the reports found that interdiction--stopping drugs before they reach U.S. ports and borders--the other half of Washington’s international drug control strategy, has not worked either. Still, $1.8 billion has been budgeted this year to curb foreign drug production and to prevent narcotics from entering the U.S.

“The report is not well-balanced,” U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Stephen R. Colgate stated in a written reply to the GAO study, adding that the work “does not provide an accurate or complete overview of the international counter-narcotics strategy.”

At the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which oversees U.S. anti-narcotics programs, Chief of Staff Janet Christ criticized the report because “the discussion of source country efforts does not fully reflect the many successful accomplishments achieved despite the political difficulties which remain.”

The GAO report said that “although these efforts have resulted in some successes, including the arrest of drug traffickers and the eradication, seizure and disruption in the transport of illegal drugs, they have not materially reduced the availability of drugs.”

A report by Sergio Uribe, planning director at a Colombian drug eradication agency, agreed.

Both reports are based on U.S. government statistics. Those numbers, the GAO found, show that the area under coca cultivation rose 15% from 1988 to 1995, while poppy acreage increased by one-fourth.

Crops eradicated in one country are quickly substituted by production in another. For example, while Laos cut poppy production in half, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, more than took up the slack.

For that reason, it remains to be seen whether the world cocaine market was affected by early indications that Peru’s coca acreage shrank in 1996.

Uribe suggested that the situation may be even more dire than the GAO report indicated.

Despite the admitted increase in acreage, he said, coca production has dropped 25% since 1988, according to U.S. government figures. By his calculations, based on U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration data, that would mean that yields have dropped by as much as one-third.

But Uribe noted that the price and purity of cocaine sold in U.S. cities have remained stable--an indication that production has not dropped. “We must either reconsider the law of supply and demand . . . question the numbers and reevaluate the current state of the industry or look for another explanation for such strange market behavior,” he said.

Even if the U.S. government is right and total potential cocaine production was 780 tons in 1995, that is still far more than is needed to keep U.S. users supplied with narcotics--even after law enforcement confiscates a share, the GAO reported. In 1995, about 280 tons of cocaine were seized worldwide.

“The remaining amount was more than enough to meet U.S. demand, which is estimated at about 300 metric tons per year,” the report stated. It also found that even after 32 tons of heroin were seized, production was still 17 times more than U.S. demand.