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When Americans think of an "endless" war they imagine the war on terror, launched after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. But there is another seemingly endless conflict - the war on drugs, now in its fourth decade. And the war on drugs offers a cautionary lesson, not
least in how both wars sometimes merge in a weird synergy.
Take the heroin trade. Late last year Los Angeles County health officials released a report that detailed an alarming rise in heroin- related deaths, from 137 in 2002 to 239 in 2005, a 75 per cent increase. Most of the victims had overdosed after injecting unusually potent heroin.
Their fix originated in the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the source of 92 per cent of the world's opium. This year's crop, valued at US$3.1 billion ($4.13 billion) , is expected to exceed 6000 tonnes of opium - the raw material for heroin - surpassing world demand. Between 2001 and 2004 Afghanistan's US market share doubled, from 7 per cent to 14 per cent. The US Drug Enforcement Administration said this percentage might be much higher.
This heroin surge is a classic case of "blow-back," the CIA's term for the law of unintended consequences. Before 2001 the Taleban had suppressed opium cultivation, as part of their ruthless rule. But after the US-led invasion that year, opium made a comeback as farmers sought to survive in a devastated economy. Last November, a World Bank report said Western efforts to crush Afghanistan's opium business - which helps fund the Taleban and al Qaeda - were failing.
At the same time the Pentagon, which initially focused on efforts to root out al Qaeda, has been pressured by the DEA to devoted more forces to eliminating opium production.
"Now we can better target the narco-terrorism which threatens Afghanistan today," said Henry Hyde, then chair of the House Committee of International Relations, in December. But critics say outlawing production is self-defeating, worsening the situation as drug lords join with insurgents.
"The US Government is in effect subsidising the terrorists by creating this huge illicit market,"says Jacob Sullum, author of Saying Yes: In Defence of Drug Use and a senior editor of the libertarian magazine Reason.
Well, he would say that, argue drug warriors. However, this line of thought isn't confined to libertarians. In 2005 the Senlis Council, a European think tank devoted to drug policy, suggested the West should simply buy the Afghan crop. Theoretically this could deprive insurgents of money, release Nato troops, stem the illegal trade, and provide opium for painkillers such as morphine and codeine.
From a pragmatic viewpoint this could be a winner for the West and Afghan farmers, and one in the eye for the Taleban. "The policy's effectiveness depends on it being done clandestinely," cautions Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert with the Rand Corporation in Washington.
"If the West says it will buy up the opium crop that just gets us into a bidding war with drug traders. Which is absolutely the wrong way to go about it." He warns that buying the opium crop will likely drive up prices. Still, at current prices, the crop would cost less than a fortnight's funds for the Iraq war. Meanwhile, there is concern that Nato's anti-drug sweeps are further destabilising Afghanistan.
Late last year the Senlis Council warned that efforts to wipe out the opium trade, with "failed counter-narcotics policies," had "hijacked" nation building in Afghanistan.
The report, Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taleban, makes sobering reading. It coincides with renewed interest in Britain, which is shouldering the heaviest combat burden in Afghanistan and by Pakistan, that the opium crop might be bought to make legal drugs.
But this approach clashes with Afghan and US policy, which insists illegal crops must be destroyed. A report in the International Herald Tribune this month showed a proclivity by the US to repeat past mistakes. Having inadvertently fuelled Afghan opium production, the US has brought Colombian police to Kabul to train local anti-drug police.
Yet decades of effort in Colombia have failed to stop the drug trade, while helping to fuel guerrilla warfare. Colombia remains America's major supplier of cocaine and heroin, despite intense efforts to eradicate coca and opium crops. Since 2003 efforts to detect and catch smugglers from Latin America have been jeopardised by the war on terror, as military ships, planes and surveillance assets are redeployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last year, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said cocaine prices had slumped 12 per cent, an indication drug supplies had increased as law enforcement fell off.
Things aren't much better at home. According to State Department figures marijuana is now America's top cash crop at $35.8 billion, trumping the top three legal crops, corn [$23 billion], soybeans [$17.6 billion] and hay [$12.2 billion]. "Despite years of effort by law enforcement, John Gettman, a marijuana policy analyst, told the LA Times in December, "they're not getting rid of it. Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."
Of course, such figures should be digested with a pinch of salt.
Marijuana's value is elevated because it is illegal. Last year marijuana worth US$100 million was seized in California alone. Mr Gettman says US production has increased tenfold over 25 years. He wants marijuana legalised and taxed. The White House says this would be "disastrous."
Still, there are signs that new thinking is emerging. In 2005 Mr Reuter and David Boyum wrote An Analytic Assessment of US Drug Policy for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Concluding that punitive policies had failed, they emphasised treatment and said the criminal punishment of marijuana use seemed unjustified. Tellingly, given events in Afghanistan, they said destroying drug crops should not be a routine international programme, "especially where it may conflict with other foreign policy objectives. In fact, evidence shows that such control is very unlikely to reduce America's drug problem."
The war on drugs has also provided a preview for the erosion of civil liberties justified as necessary to win the war on terror. Law enforcement has long argued, successfully in many instances, that the 4th Amendment protection against searches without a warrant is unrealistic when going after dangerous drug smugglers.
Did this provide a template for the Bush Administration's demand for greater official surveillance powers? "I think there is a general similarity," says Peter Illiasberg, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, noting that in both the war on drugs and the war on terror fear has been used as an instrument to violate civil liberties.
Meanwhile, the US spends $40 billion a year on enforcement in a drug war waged since 1970, when the Controlled Substances Act was passed and the DEA founded. If wider issues, such as the cost of crime, loss of productivity and medical care, are included the figure reaches $180 billion.
"It's very hard to show that the increasingly punitive trend of American drug policy has any good consequences," says Mr Reuter. "That's not an argument or legalisation. But locking up half a million people - which is what the US does now - has not made heroin or cocaine any less available or expensive than it was 20 years ago. The price of both have fallen substantially over that period."
Despite this withering verdict Congress is silent on the issue.
Mr Reuter believes this is because the problem hasn't become substantially worse - although the methamphetamine scourge has cut a swathe through Middle America - or really affected the middle classes.
And while California's lead on "medical marijuana" - dispensed at hundreds of clinics in 12 states, despite being illegal under federal law - is unlikely to affect public attitudes towards other drugs, the state now favours treatment not jail for first-time offenders. Whether blow-back and the collision between the wars on drugs and terror will reshape entrenched attitudes towards drug policy in Washington is another matter.
