Congress Throwing $2.3 Billion More at Drug War

by Jim Lobe

By a veto-proof 384-39 vote, the House approved the "Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act" which called for an additional $2.3 billion to be spent over the next three years on interdiction and eradication activities.

The act, which now goes to the Senate, set conditions on the delivery of anti-drug aid to Mexico and Colombia which appeared likely to provoke controversy in those two nations.

The legislation requires Washington to cut off aid to Colombia if the new government of President Andres Pastrana, who hopes to negotiate a peace accord with long-standing insurgencies there, agrees to establish demilitarized zones in which drug eradication or interdiction is banned.

The bill also made $18 million available to Mexico for six high-altitude helicopters to eradicate opium fields but tied their delivery to Mexico's agreement to provide diplomatic immunity for U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials and permission for them to carry firearms. Mexico has refused such demands in the past.

In testimony before the Senate foreign relations committee, the administration's "drug czar," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey opposed the measure and called its stated goal of reducing the flow of illegal drugs into the United States by 80 percent within three years "completely unrealistic."

He also complained that the bill imposed detailed and "inflexible requirements." In one provision cited by McCaffrey, the bill requires funding to be used to acquire "concertina wire and tunneling detection systems at the La Picota prison of the National Police of Colombia."

"Interdiction success is not the main determinant of illegal drug consumption," McCaffrey said, adding that demand, created by social acceptance of drug use, peer example, and the availability of drugs from domestic sources, were all important contributing factors.

But the bill's sponsors charged that the administration had given too much priority to demand reduction, and had little to show for it. Recent surveys of teenagers in the United States showed a growing use of illicit drugs since the early 1990s and, as McCaffrey pointed out, marijuana -- which accounts for 90 percent of all juvenile drug use -- is often homegrown.

Sen. Paul Coverdell, a sponsor of the bill, declared that during Clinton's first presidential term funding had been reduced for counter-narcotics activities by the Coast Guard, the Customs Service and the Pentagon.

"The bottom line is that as we shifted resources away from interdiction, it became easier for drug traffickers to transport illegal drugs into this country," said Coverdell, an influential voice on drug matters among Republicans. "As the supply of drugs has grown, the price has fallen and the number of users has increased."

In fact, the administration's funding for anti-drug efforts in Latin America has risen sharply since 1995, according to Eric Olsen, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which strongly opposes the bill.

Olsen and other critics cite a recent study by Congress' own investigative arm, the GAO which concluded that "the amount of cocaine and heroin seized between 1990 and 1995 made little impact on the availability of illegal drugs in the United States and on the amount needed to satisfy the estimated U.S. demand." Similarly, despite increases in funding for anti-drug efforts in Latin America by some 150 percent between 1987 and 1997, the State Department estimated that coca cultivation in the Andes had increased 11.7 percent, while opium production had doubled.

"I think this bill didn't get the full scrutiny it deserved partly because of election-year politics," according to Olsen. "This is just throwing more money after a bad policy which hasn't worked."

The political nature of the issue highlighted the rare intervention in the debate today by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who strongly supported the bill, and by the fact that no committee hearings were held about the bill before the vote.

"It always pays to be tough on drugs six weeks before an election," one Congressional aide told IPS.

It authorized $130 million for upgrading 50 Huey helicopters and providing six Black Hawk helicopters for the Colombian national police provided that the Pastrana government does not agree to the establishment of demilitarized zones in parts of the country, as demanded by leftist guerrillas. That measure alone would more than double the existing U.S. military and security aid program for Bogota.

The bill provides for $3 million to establish a drug interdiction site at Puerto Maldonado in Peru, and $1 million for a coca eradication program and $5 million for mobile X-ray machines to for anti-drug forces in Bolivia.

It also included $65 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for crop-substitution programs, of which $50 million would be earmarked for Peru, $10 million for Colombia, and $5 million for Bolivia.

The House adopted one amendment to the bill which called for the Pentagon to consider its role in the drug war to be its top priority behind "war-fighting." It also approved another which authorized the president to deploy the armed forces along the U.S. borders to control drug-smuggling.

The latter measure was adopted over strong objections from Texas and California congressmen opposed to the militarization of the border area, particularly after the killing last year of a young Hispanic-American goatherd by U.S. marines who believed he was a smuggler.

The House also rejected an amendment to strip from the bill all the proposed aid to Colombia and Mexico in light of allegations of corruption and human rights abuses by its security forces.