Official: War on Drugs at 'Tipping Point'

[Rose Siding]

snip>
"I've been at this for 15 years and I have truly never been more optimistic than I am right now," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert B. Charles, the State Department's top anti-narcotics official, said from Washington in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Charles claimed the drug war is "at a tipping point both in Colombia and the region" and predicted authorities would "break the backs" of drug cartels within the next two years.

But another key indicator has stubbornly refused to conform, casting doubt on the claims of victory: cocaine prices in the United States remain stable, and availability has even surged in some areas.
.........
"These guys are delusional to think they're close to winning the so-called drug war," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based nonprofit group Drug Policy Alliance.

Nadelmann said, and drug agents agree, that in addition to street prices being stable, the purity of cocaine on U.S. streets has remained the same for years -- so smugglers are not diluting the cocaine more than they normally do to make up for a supply reduction.

Washington officials say prices are unchanged because traffickers have stockpiled tons of cocaine along smuggling routes.

But Francisco Thoumi, an economics professor and an expert on drug trafficking at Bogota's Rosario University, doubts that.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-colombia-us-drug-war,0,1396288.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Get real

we can't 'win' the drug war or the CIA won't have their main source of money, and the government won't have the tool they need to keep minorities in check.

[NC_Nurse]

2. That

is such a bunch of shit! I'm amazed how out of touch and deluded these DC bureaucrats really are!

Besides, the real explosion these days is in the do-it-yourself meth labs and they're just beginning to realize how prevalent that's gotten.

Columbia's not the only place that imports drugs either.

It's like Chris Rock says people will find a way to get high. They really need to reform the drug laws in this back-assward country. :eyes:

[troubleinwinter]

3. Uhhhh....

and the Afghanistan poppy fields????!!!??

[JoFerret]

4. More likely : "I've been on drugs for 15 years and..."

..how's the price of heroin these days? Is is available at all?

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

5. Easy proof

That the "War on Drugs" is meaningless, except for the lives it ruins and the dollars it wastes...

The price of street drugs hasn't gone up with inflation! A bag of weed or coke is a better buy than it was ten or twenty years ago. The price is about the same and is a lot less hamburgers today.

Enforcement drives prices down--when the "heat" is on dealers dump their stashes. This alone is proof that the war on drugs is totally counterproductive, even assuming that getting people off drugs is a legitimate goal for the federal government.

[alfredo]

7. A supply side drug war will not succeed.

As long as there is a demand, there will be a supply.

They are just jerking us off.

[BulletproofLandshark]

12. Exactly

People are going to get their drugs one way or another if they really want them. The only way this "war" is going to be winnable is for society to take a deeper look into why people are using in the first place. Of course I still believe the book should be thrown at violent drug offenders,people who deal to kids,etc. But for the most part the government would make a lot more headway by encouraging compassion and treatment than with pesticides or down the barrel of a gun.

[alfredo]

17. I am all for the switch from a legal issue to a health issue.

I wonder if the for profit prisons have any say on the conduct of the war on drugs?

[number6]

6. that dude must be on drugs ....

:smoke::hippie:;)

[Amigust]

8. More Bush-think

If you're the head of the war on drugs, such statements would make it appear that you were doing your job right. Oh, well.

Hmmm, I wonder if he's breaking the backs of the Afghan drug lords too.

[Nalgenelover Snort]

9. how DARE they

trumpet their "successes" in Columbia. They're spraying Roundup on farmers' fields down there to get rid of cocaine and people are DYING from it. There are children with fucking skin lesions, there are people starving because their crops are dying, the water is polluted, and these asshats are trumpeting their SUCCESS?!

Jesus christ. This is absolutely SICKENING. "Yeah, we've killed a few thousand people, but it's okay! We've managed to delude ourselves into thinking we can actually win this bullshit war on drugs!"

[RebelYell]

10. I've got questions

Why did Carlos Lehder disappear from prison? Where the HELL is he, if not in prison? He got a life sentence!

On a Caribbean island living the good life? I wish someone would investigate.

[Terry in Austin]

15. Carlos Lehder

is discussed in Mike Ruppert's new book, Crossing the Rubicon. Released from prison in 1995 with the help of some intervention by the Clinton administration, Lehder is back in action in the Bahamas and in South America.

Apparently, the "genius of transportation" has moved up from his former status as super-trafficante to providing his logistical skills to Halliburton, the CIA and other worthies in the international drug-capitalist establishment.

[RebelYell]

18. WTF?

WHY was he released???

Thanks for the info.

[newyawker99]

22. Hi Terry in Austin!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[jmowreader]

16. Worse: there's now Roundup Ready Cocaine

The Colombian coca growers have developed a varietal of coca that not only produces more cocaine alkaloid than the traditional coke plant (meaning it's more profitable to plant this strain because you can get more blow from it), it can also withstand repeated dousings of Roundup.

[newyawker99]

21. Hi Nalgenelover Snort!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Downtown Hound]

11. Blah, blah, blah

I hate to break it too you geniuses, but coke has been dead for some time. Even if you were to eradicate it completely, the few remaining users of it would simply do what everyone else who can't find it has done: switch to meth! Yes that's right, all your multi-billion dollar operations, support of repressive governments in the name of fighting drugs, and hundreds of thousands of people jailed have only pushed them to harder drugs.

What a bunch of self deluded creeps.

[Ezlivin]

13. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.

Every year they make "record setting" busts.

Every year they make big arrests.

Every year they make big promises.

Every year they ask for our money.

Every year they spend more.

Every year nothing changes.

But next year! It's going to be a blockbuster, just you wait and see!

[kodi]

14. meanwhile you can buy domestic made meth like candy, and cheaper too

.

[flying_blind]

19. OMG - how will they ever pay for their covert actions?!?

The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

The National Security Archive is MUST READ information if you've not seen it before.

[flying_blind]

20. RE: OMG

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News initiated an extended series of articles linking the CIA's "contra" army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.1 Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The series unleashed a storm of protest, spearheaded by black radio stations and the congressional Black Caucus, with demands for official inquiries. The Mercury News' Web page, with supporting documents and updates, received hundreds of thousands of "hits" a day.

While much of the CIA-contra-drug story had been revealed years ago in the press and in congressional hearings, the Mercury News series added a crucial missing link: It followed the cocaine trail to Ross and black L.A. gangs who became street-level distributors of crack, a cheap and powerful form of cocaine. The CIA's drug network, wrote Webb, "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the 'crack' capital of the world." Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.

CIA Director John Deutch declared that he found "no connection whatsoever" between the CIA and cocaine traffickers. And major media--the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post--have run long pieces refuting the Mercury News series. They deny that Bay Area-based Nicaraguan drug dealers, Juan Norwin Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon, worked for the CIA or contributed "millions in drug profits" to the contras, as Webb contended. They also note that neither Ross nor the gangs were the first or sole distributors of crack in L.A. Webb, however, did not claim this. He wrote that the huge influx of cocaine happened to come at just the time that street-level drug dealers were figuring out how to make cocaine affordable by changing it into crack.

Many in the media have also postulated that any drug-trafficking contras involved were "rogue" elements, not supported by the CIA. But these denials overlook much of the Mercury News' evidence of CIA complicity.
More:
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol1/cia_body.html

Much More:
www.copvcia.com/