The Drug Fight Begins at Home : Our Voracious Demand Drives Colombia’s Lawlessness

Colombia is on the brink of falling from the ranks of civil society. Only time will tell whether it can claw its way back.

The United States should surely help. The recent aid package of $65 million, while small by comparison to Colombia’s problem, is welcome. At the same time, however, it is a mistake to let our rhetoric cause us to misconstrue the drug problem or to expect too much.

Despite all the talk of a “war” on drugs, Colombia’s problem is crime and corruption, not arms or invaders. By the same token, despite all the violence of America’s inner cities, our problem is the voracious demand for cocaine that drives the trafficking network.

In this context, the American military is limited in what it can do to help Colombia. The military could, and no doubt will, be called upon to do more in interdicting drugs entering the United States. Unfortunately, interdiction is a loser as a policy. So far, more and more cocaine has been intercepted but so too has more and more made it through. Only the price of drugs has gone down on the streets of America.

So long as we continue to be the relatively open society we are and so long as Americas continue to be willing to pay for drugs, then drugs will find their way here. From Colombia’s perspective, moreover, the more cocaine that is intercepted en route to the United States, the more incentive Colombian traffickers have to step up their exports.

American GIs could help destroy coca crops. That is not a task relevant to Colombia, which is the center of trafficking, not a primary growing area.

But even in Peru and Bolivia, the main growing countries, sending the American military to destroy the crops is not in the cards. It is risky and the symbolism of Americans destroying the livelihoods of peasant farmers is terrible. Still, it might be worth it if the effort could cut the flow of drugs to the United States. It can’t. There simply are too many places where coca can be grown. Production will simply move from one location to another.

If not crops, then, what about using the military to destroy coca processing laboratories? American soldiers did help Bolivians do this in 1986 during Operation Blast Furnace. Symbolism aside, however, this tactic is also unpromising. Partly, our language misleads. Mention “laboratories” and we conjure up something akin to petrochemical complexes; in fact, these “laboratories” are collections of huts and beakers in the jungle, easily replaced.

If not laboratories, then what about the traffickers? Thus far our experience at going after them has not be encouraging. On the rare occasions when a top trafficker has been captured, it has made little difference to the flow of drugs. However, catching a dozen or more at once might make a difference; we don’t know for sure, but it seems logical that it would.

Catching traffickers, though, is a police matter, not a military one. Military operations are not by nature quiet ones; by the time Operation Blast Furnace raided jungle labs, the traffickers were long gone.

The focus of American assistance to Colombia ought to be in helping to rebuild that country’s shattered law-enforcement system. We might help it protect its judges and build up its special anti-narcotics police. In a country where young magistrates earn $100 a month and have little or no protection, what is surprising is that some actually do prosecute traffickers. Our own lessons in fighting the Mafia are relevant, and so are those of other countries--for instance, the special courts that Italy built to put the Red Brigades on trial.

Colombia and other countries have shied away from involving their own militaries in the war on drugs for fear of corrupting them. Our own military has been reluctant, partly for the institutional unwillingness to take on a new mission but also for the more legitimate concern over crossing the line into law enforcement.

For our part, the best thing the United States can do is to begin to work on our problem--demand. It does no good to blame us for causing Colombia’s troubles; however the scourge arrived, it is now Colombia’s problem and thoughtful Colombians recognize that fact. It is fair, though, to observe that until the engine of American demand is slowed, cocaine will afflict both the United States and Latin America.

We have made some progress among the middle class; surveys of high school seniors show that they have taken the message that cocaine is dangerous. But we have not made any advance against crack in the inner city. There the problem is nested with others--the hopelessness and short time horizons bred by the lack of visible economic futures. That is our problem. It is not a military one. In the long run, doing something about it is more important than any short-term aid to Colombia.