HONOLULU ADVERTISER, Monday, April 3, 2000

It’s time for peace in drug war

By Sylvester L. Salcedo 
(Sylvester L. Salcedo was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy and served 
as an intelligence officer with Joint Task Force 6, which provides training 
support to drug law-enforcement agencies.)
 

The United States should admit failure, stop wasting money on Colombia’s 
right-wing military and switch to treatment and education.

I have served on the front lines of the war on drugs. I am reporting back 
that it is a failure.

Last year I received a Navy achievement medal for my military service in the 
drug war. Last month I returned this medal to President Clinton to protest 
his proposed $1.7 billion special appropriation for Colombia.

Under the guise of fighting drugs this aid package will dramatically escalate 
U.S. military involvement in Colombia’s civil war. Colombians are exhausted 
and dispirited after 40 years of civil strife. In recent months Colombians by 
the millions have taken to the streets in huge national marches calling for 
peace.

Representatives of the insurgents and government negotiators have just 
returned from a watershed 25-day tour of Western Europe, where they explored 
peace. Increased U.S. military aid to Colombia will derail this peace 
process. More than 80 percent of the funds destined for Colombia will be 
spent on helicopters and other military aid. These are the wrong tools to 
fight a problem that is fundamentally political and economic.

Moreover, the Colombian military is profoundly ineffective and tied to 
right-wing paramilitary forces who are human-rights abusers and drug 
traffickers. The U.S. aid package is a recipe for more lawlessness and 
military failure on the battlefield.

Our drug war leaders say their goal is a “drug-free America.” But three 
decades of the drug war have shown that goal to be unreaIistic, so our 
strategy must be replaced. Pursuing an unrealistic goal has resulted in 
insufficient funding for effective programs, such as making treatment 
available on request and providing after-school programs for our children.

At the same time, we waste tax dollars on ineffective, expensive and 
dangerous programs such as the massive imprisonment of drug users and the 
exorbitant military-aid package to Colombia. As a result, today we have more 
prisoners per capita than any other country, and Colombia receives the most 
U.S. military aid in this hemisphere. 

The best way to help Colombia and to help the United States is to reduce the 
demand for illicit drugs here at home. This conclusion is reinforced by my 
work as a Spanish teacher in Roxbury, Mass. — a low-income, drug-riddled 
section of Boston — where I have seen drug abuse among our kids and witnessed 
the deleterious effects of our domestic drug war.

As an alternative to the drug war,
I propose a “Plan USA” to provide treatment, on request, for our hardcore 
drug-addict population that now exceeds 5 million people. The Rand Corp. has 
found that treatment is 10 times more cost-effective than interdiction in 
reducing the use of cocaine.

Plan USA would also discourage drug use by adolescents by providing adequate 
funding of after-school programs and mentor programs. In addition, Plan USA 
would move to treat and reintegrate the more than 100,000 prisoners 
imprisoned on nonviolent drug charges.

With the proper programs, these people should be able to return to their 
families and communities, where they could work and pay taxes.

We need to set realistic goals — fewer deaths from drugs, less adolescent 
drug use, less disease and less crime from drug abuse. We can implement a 
strategy of control. We can achieve a safer and healthier America that is no 
longer at war with itself. These are not utopian platitudes, but achievable 
goals.

Other countries, especially in Europe, are more successfully controlling drug 
abuse through public-health approaches. We should follow their lead. It is 
time to admit failure and end the war on drugs.

As a first step, Congress should say no to more aid for the Colombian 
military. Instead, we should take that $1.7 billion and invest it to support 
the peace plan in Colombia and to provide treatment and prevention programs 
here at home.

Weapons and war are not the answer. Americans and Colombians both need peace 
for their families and communities.