Monday, 18. June 2007
Topic: DRUGS - on June 18, 2007 at 10:39:00 AM CEST
Romancing the snow
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.
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