Romancing the Snow - SF Gate Article

Cocaine is easier and cheaper to get for people on the street. It's the government that's paying dearly for it. The money that we have spent on trying to stop cocaine production could be put into treatment for people who can't afford it, which would be a much better investment.

IN 1999, Washington launched "Plan Colombia," with the promise that the anti-drug program would halve Colombian cocaine production.

The law of unintended consequences rules in this drug war. Plan Colombia has not delivered.

U.S. crop dusters have sprayed an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island. U.S. taxpayers have forked over some $4.7 billion. Yet cocaine is abundant and cheap on the streets of America. As Ken Dermota wrote in the July/August issue of the Atlantic, the price of a gram of cocaine in Los Angeles fell from $50 to $100 per gram in 1999 to $30-$50 in 2005. Prices are down in New York, Seattle and Atlanta. White House Drug Czar John Walters recently admitted that street cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006.

Demand isn't the issue. Demand remains steady. Supply is the issue: Growers produce far more cocaine than the world consumes.

Despite Plan Colombia, Colombian cocaine farming grew 9 percent in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported, the third straight year with an increase. Peru produced an estimated 165 tons of cocaine in 2005, Bolivia another 70 tons, according to The Atlantic. It's almost as if America is spending billions to eradicate weeds -- the coca just comes back, bigger and more abundant than before.

Congressional Democrats are considering decreasing the program's annual $700-million budget by 10 percent.

But why only 10 percent?

SFGATE ARTICLE HERE