MEXICO CITY — The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck.
Despite billions of dollars in U.S. antidrug spending and record seizures, statistics recently released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy suggest that cocaine is as available as ever.
Cocaine users and law enforcement officials both care about price and purity. Authorities work to choke off supply, driving up cost and dampening street sales. Users want better coke at cheaper prices.
In 2005, John P. Walters, the head of the drug policy office, made headlines touting a surge in cocaine prices and falling levels of quality. Those figures indicated that U.S. drug control policies were working, he said.
But the new numbers issued by his office indicate that any victory was short-lived. Retail cocaine prices last year fell more than 12% from January to October, while average purity of cocaine seized by authorities rose from about 68% to 73%. And this time, the drug policy office did little to publicize the figures, releasing them in a letter to U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
The new statistics emboldened critics who say the Bush administration's antidrug strategies need to change.
"You can spin this any way you want, but when prices go down and supply goes up, the fact of the matter is that this policy is not working," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a longtime critic who supports spending more on economic development.
Since the Iraq war began more than four years ago, the Pentagon has sharply reduced spending on air and sea surveillance of trafficking routes in the Pacific and Caribbean. The centerpiece of the U.S. strategy against cocaine has shifted to Plan Colombia, which funds aerial fumigation of coca plants. Colombian growers supply 90% of U.S. users through Mexican smuggling rings that control the cocaine and marijuana trade.
"Crop control is the most cost-effective means of cutting supply," according to the 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, issued by the U.S. State Department. Last year, Colombia reported it had destroyed more than half a million acres of coca plants.
But growers have responded to the fumigation by breaking up their crops into smaller areas in an apparently successful hide-and-seek strategy. U.S. officials estimate that as much as 800 tons of cocaine still was exported from Colombia.
