The other failed war

The New York Times today is reporting on the failure of the US to make a dent in Columbian coca crops:

The latest chapter in America’s long war on drugs — a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia’s coca crop — has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged.

So basically, we've blown almost $5 billion dollars and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Bravo. (And what do we have to show for the $300+ billion spent in Iraq?)

As much coca is cultivated today in Colombia as was grown at the start of the large-scale aerial fumigation effort in 2000, according to State Department figures.

Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the leading sources of coca and cocaine, produce more than enough cocaine to satisfy world demand, and possibly as much as in the mid-1990’s, the United Nations says.

In the United States, the government’s tracking over the past quarter century shows that the price of cocaine has tumbled and that purity remains high, signs that the drug is as available as ever.

Despite these facts, John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, somehow sees the situation in a different light:

“You see the remaining cultivation and trafficking in Colombia under pressure as you’ve never seen it before.”

Hell, give him another blank check. Keep up the good work!

Let's be clear: The $4.7 billion figure listed is only for the eradication program in Columbia. Absorb this figure:

Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, echoing other analysts, estimates that the drug war has cost American taxpayers upward of $40 billion annually in recent years, though there is no comprehensive government tally of all its state and federal spending.

Which begs the question: Why the hell not?