Drug Interdiction

From an article in the Hartford Courant:
In September 2005 President Bush asked for an extension of Plan Colombia, a drug interdiction program that cost $3 billion over 5 years. President Bush said "The plan is producing results," but U.S. officials acknowledged that "access to cocaine, its purity level, and its street price remain virtually unchanged." Officials from both countries claimed that an increase in seizures in Colombia is proof that the plan is working: they'd seized 45 tons of cocaine in 2005, up from 33 in all of 2004. However, they admitted that a total of 420 tons would get through in 2005, just from Colombia alone. This satisfies two-thirds of the estimated US demand.

I view this as strong evidence that this kind of interdiction is not a good use of funds; I would rather see these $3 billion go into education and treatment here in the United States, as well as some real drug law reform in this country. There is extremely strong evidence that trying to reduce supply is not effective in reducing drug use in the U.S. We must reduce DEMAND, through education and treatment. A reduction in demand would also reduce violent and non-violent crime in our cities; it would reduce theft by addicts used to pay for their habits, and it would reduce the sales and profits of drug gangs that are responsible for so much of the violent crime in our inner cities.