Plan Colombia under fire

Prohibition profiteer, US Ambassador to Colombia William Wood, is cooling his heels in his guarded mansion in Bogota pronouncing the war on some drugs as a success. He's pleased that "There is no sign that in FY 2006 that we're going to take a cut." That would be a cut in funding supplied by our tax dollars. The budget calls for 700 million to be poured into the money pit that is Plan Colombia, which brings the total of your money wasted on this project to almost 3 billion.

He calls the most recent embarrassing bust of US soldiers selling your tax-funded munitions to leftist guerrillas on the black market, just a case of a few bad apples. Just like those soldiers that were recently caught smuggling cocaine back on military planes were a few more bad apples. Guess no one told him that one bad apple can spoil the barrel.

Meanwhile fumigation efforts continue apace. They expect to bomb even more acres into toxic wastelands with herbicide this year. Of course, it hasn't dented the supply of coke on the street so far, although Wood insists that this year it will really work.

The irony is that the fumigation leaves the land suitable for growing nothing but this rumored new "supercoca" that is impervious to the herbicide. So much for alternative development. The good news is that increasingly, the folly of this plan is being noted from newspaper editorials to think tank reports and there's a growing consensus among the public that the only real solution is legalization and regulation.

We may win this war yet folks.