
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990                   TAG: 9003122966
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN DRUG-WAR NEWS, NUGGETS OF HOPE

MAKING SENSE of the news about drugs is not easy. There was William Bennett, the anti-drug czar, announcing the other day that the war is being won - citing positive statistics he had ignored months ago. There is word that the market for coca leaves in Bolivia has collapsed - yet global production of all drugs considered illicit in this country has zoomed. There are figures indicating a decline in drug use by the U.S. middle-class - yet the United States remains the world's biggest drug emporium.

Some of these contradictions may result from faults in perception: The drug menace is so dreaded that we have trouble recognizing or admitting good news. Or it may be that statistical compilations, which take so long to organize, don't yet reflect recent developments that show change.

Bennett's pronouncements should be discounted. To put his own efforts in a favorable perspective, at first he played up data that showed the problem he was tackling was terrible and getting worse; not long afterward, to imply that his efforts were succeeding, he focused on numbers, available all along, that made the picture look better. We're winning the drug war, he says, as if it were easy to turn things around in only a few months.

But there may indeed be significant small victories. Law enforcement has been belittled as a tool against drug traffic, yet it has made advances in the Andes, perhaps the least likely place.

The crackdown by Colombia's government has some of the drug dealers there suing for peace. Because they have taken cover, they are buying less coca leaf for processing. Thus, there has been a sharp drop in prices for the leaf in neighboring Bolivia - where police also are putting pressure on growers. The drop - from $60 for a 100-pound bag of coca in January 1989 to as little as $5 now - makes it easier for Bolivian authorities to persuade peasants to plow under their coca fields and plant alternative crops.

This success may be temporary. Bolivia for one could use more U.S. aid to assist in this process: It is due to get $20 million this year. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., says he'll offer a bill calling for $125 million in emergency economic aid for the Andean nations this fiscal year.

If the Bush administration truly believes its strategy is working, it will support this legislation, which would intensify its own efforts. Success at interdicting drug production at the source will increase the need for aid to the Andean countries, whose economies have become dependent on growing and processing coca. In effect, the United States got them hooked on the drug dollar; now we must help them kick the habit as we struggle to control ours.

That's not so simple as getting peasants to change crops. Peru, for instance, has a menacing Marxist guerrilla movement, Shining Path, and suffers from annual inflation over 5,000 percent. Along with other Latin American nations, the Andean countries have big economic and social problems; the coca market is only one manifestation.

Still, a victory over Andean coca production would be significant: Ninety percent of the cocaine that enters this country comes from leaf that is grown in Bolivia and Peru, then processed in Colombia.

A drop in that flow could give the United States some breathing room to get a grip on its domestic drug-use problem. The country needs intensified educational efforts - the kind that finally are getting the message to the middle class - and greater availability of treatment for addicts. As long as the market for illicit drugs remains strong here, there will be entrepreneurs in Latin America, Asia, Europe or elsewhere who will respond. We can pass more laws, but we can't repeal the one about supply and demand.

by CNB