BOGOTA, Colombia
Despite Drug War, Cocaine Purer, Cheaper
Drug's Prices Have Dropped From $600 Per Gram In 1981 To $135 Despite Nearly $5 Billion Spent By U.S.
-
(AP)
-
Interactive Substance Abuse In America Get the facts on a national problem. Find out where to get help, learn how drugs affect the body and compare state drunk-driving laws.
The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine — hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600.
The purity of this cocaine, meanwhile, has “trended somewhat toward former levels,” as well, Walters said in the letter, citing data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Colombia supplies 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States. Declining prices and rising purity could also suggest weakening demand, but several household and school-based surveys show that America's cocaine consumption has barely budged since 2000, and demand in Europe has increased.
Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, is set to meet with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday to discuss U.S. support for Plan Colombia, the anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency program that has cost American taxpayers more than $4 billion since 2000.
Walters' letter to Grassley, the Republican co-chair of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, was sent in January in response to a request from the senator. It was made available to The Associated Press by the Washington Office on Latin America, a liberal lobby group.
U.S. officials have insisted repeatedly that Plan Colombia is reducing the quality and availability of to American users.
But Grassley, in an e-mailed statement to the AP, said the new data is “all the proof that anybody needs” that the White House drug office “has gotten quite good at spinning the numbers, but cooking the books doesn't help our efforts to curb cocaine and heroin production and consumption.”
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said senior U.S. Embassy officials gave him older, more encouraging data during a visit to Bogota in March — two months after the drug czar quietly released his more downbeat appraisal.
“We've given this program a chance to work and clearly this is not producing the results we were promised,” McGovern said. “Cocaine is priced as low and purity is as high as it was before Plan Colombia began six years and $5 billion ago.”
Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the AP that Walters would not comment on the letter but Lemaitre described it as “an accurate reflection of our agency's thoughts on the issue.”
In November 2005, Walters announced that cocaine prices had risen by 19 percent and purity had dropped by about the same. He touted the development as a sign that the United States had turned the corner in the drug war. Drug policy experts rejected his assertions at the time, and Grassley called for his dismissal.
“When the data show a brief rise in cocaine prices, the drug czar holds a high-profile press conference,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for International Policy. “But when the trend goes back down again, the drug czar sends it in a letter to one senator. Why is that?”
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- next
See all 46 CommentsThe MADNESS OF PROHIBITION MUST END!
Stop this idea in its tracks. Please do not take away my extra tax free income.
The government, the CIA, and the DEA run the drug trade, and their operatives distribute almost all of the cocaine and heroin that comes into this country.
Oh, pleeease. If this were true the govenment would be in a lot better financial shape.
The MADNESS OF PROHIBITION MUST END!
http://www.leap.cc
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
http://www.mpp.org
Marijuana Policy Project
Cops Say LEGALIZE AND REGULATE DRUGS!
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
http://www.leap.cc
Despite Drug War, Cocaine purer, cheepe;
WOW! Sounds like good news for the DRUG SMUGGLERS AND USERS?
Sounds like the Bush administration is taking care of their supporters?
Drugs are more widely available and of greater purity than ever its time to legalize and regulate narcotics now THE WAR IS LOST!!!
Posted by didntinhale at 03:04 PM : Apr 28, 2007
we hope this does not mean, we have to spend billions upon billions in Iraq and then put our soldiers and Iraqis through hell for 40 years--before you realize that one is lost also. Sometimes--you just have to bite the bullet--not for prides sake, or because terrorists will follow us home (so, what if they do?) but because no one deserves their country turned into a battle ground over a war started by outsiders. If we want a war, we should fight it on our own turf and if we want to win wars on anything social--we better remember that force never changed any social system--but time and better choices do. TV, the internet and goods will do more to change Iraq than bombs and guns ever will and it will do it in less than 40 years.
Drugs are still prevalent in America, with meth and ecstasy now added to the other designer drugs and old standbys such as heroin, coke and marijuana. Now, journalists can't spell and often borrow phrases and slang from ethnic cultures to describe the news. (like Bush's mojo and nappy headed hos) Still got lots of poor with the middle class steadily losing ground. And then we have the war on terror. Being instigated and fought in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, Al Qaeda or the Taliban--but hey--all these things divert attention from the fact that our government is corrupt, out of control and not listening to us anymore.
....America will ever learn.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- next
See all 46 Comments