Bill will aid drug traffic

The funding request is illustrative of the Clinton administration's "get tough" approach to drug abuse that refuses to allow marijuana to be used as a medicinal aid.

High on its agenda is the militarization of Latin American nations with the apparent purpose of halting the flow of the 400 tons of cocaine into the United States from the Mexican border every year.

Colombia provides up to 90 percent of the cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin consumed here. Cocaine production was up 20 percent last year, even though the United States pumped $300 million into Colombian anti-narcotics efforts.

In Colombia, drug-related kidnappings and violence have brought the nation to its knees. Last year there were 3,650 deaths in Medellin alone attributed to paramilitary forces fighting drug traffickers and guerrillas.

The hemisphere needs new leadership in confronting the insinuating rise of narcotics traffickers, who, like parasites, are sucking the blood from the democratic fabric of entire nations.

The politicians, judges, law enforcement personnel, lawyers and human rights workers who are heroically confronting drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico despite death threats, are being let down by disastrous policies that put their lives in jeopardy.

How the militarization of Latin America will solve this bloody dilemma is something only the Clinton Administration can rationalize. The amount of cocaine coming into the United States from Mexico every year is alarming, but the human toll of ineffective leadership is even higher.

Even if the highly unlikely United States-Colombian anti-narcotics operations do succeed, producers will simply move their operations elsewhere. This has been the pattern and, as long as there's demand, it is not likely to change.

Visionary author William S. Burroughs prophesied that an international police conspiracy would arise from the global militarization of the war on drugs. We are perhaps witnessing the beginnings of his prophecy with the Clinton administration's insistence on funding paramilitary forces in Colombia and other Latin American nations.

The casualties will not be drug producers but democracy, human rights, and the tragic deaths of hundreds of people courageously fighting a futile war.

John Putman is a CSULB journalism major.