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Personnel at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) have informed us that a bill being voted on the floor on Congress this coming Wednesday (9/16) will dramatically increase the flow of dollars and equipment to Latin American militaries for drug fighting. The "Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act," sponsored by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL) and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) would authorize $2.3 billion over three years for equipment (mostly military hardware), personnel and training.

In the House, the bill has the solid support of the Republican leadership, and he sponsors are so confident, they have decided to bring the bill to the floor under "suspension of the rules." This is a technical procedure whereby "non-controversial" proposals can be brought to a vote in an expedited fashion, but must pass by a 2/3 majority instead of the usual 50%. This means that the bill can be defeated if its opponents muster 145 votes instead of the usual 217.

Please call or fax your U.S. Representative, and ask him or her to oppose the McCollum Drug Act and the expansion of the failed Andean drug war. You can reach your Representative (or find out who your Representative is) through the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. (You can also use http://www.house.gov/writerep/ to look up the office contact info online.)

Points you can use, courtesy of WOLA:

• By offering this bill under suspension, the sponsors intend to rush it through Congress without sufficient debate. This should be a time to debate and re-evaluate current U.S. antinarcotics policy. Instead, the sponsors plan to authorize a lot of money on a policy that has had absolutely no success.
• By offering military equipment and training to Latin American police and militaries with questionable human rights records, the bill undermines fundamental U.S. foreign policy goals of supporting democracy and human rights. Such a policy can also embroil the United States in brutal counterinsurgency wars. The equipment and training received by anti-drug forces can be easily used for counterinsurgency purposes. In the case of Colombia, for example, many Members of Congress reduce guerrillas and drug traffickers into one enemy, the "narcoguerrilla," thereby erasing the line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency - but in doing so they ignore the army's and right-wing paramilitaries' ties to the drug trade. In Mexico, the same units receiving U.S. counternarcotics training are operating in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca.
• By training Latin American militaries in anti-drug police work, the United States is encouraging them to perform domestic law enforcement duties prohibited of the U.S. military. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "there is little proof that the involvement of [Mexican] soldiers in police work has helped stem the flow of drugs. But there is growing evidence that this controversial program has led to serious human rights abuses."
• The bill pours billions of dollars into counternarcotics programs that have produced only failure. Rep. McCollum claims that if you "prevent drugs from entering the country, ...you drive up the price of drugs. Drive up the price of drugs and you save lives." But supply reduction, as this is known, has actually had the paradoxical result of increasing prices, thus attracting new producers and distributors to the market, and eventually driving prices back down again. The U.S. government has already spent more than $25 billion on interdiction programs and efforts to disrupt drug production in "source countries," but prices for a pure gram of both heroin and cocaine (as measured in 1994 dollars) have declined markedly in the last 15 years.

• For Latin America overall, U.S. government funding for antidrug efforts has increased more than 150 percent over the last ten years; yet by the U.S. State Department's own estimates, coca cultivation is 11.7 percent higher and opium production has doubled over that time period.
• U.S. antidrug efforts have failed most spectacularly in Colombia, the largest recipient of U.S. counter-drug assistance (a total of nearly one billion dollars to date). Yet over the last decade, total drug production in Colombia has risen an estimated 260 percent. Coca production in Colombia has more than tripled, making Colombia the world's leading coca producer. Only four years ago, no heroin was produced in Colombia; it now ranks third in the world in poppy cultivation and fourth in heroin production.

For further information on the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act or the impact of counternarcotics policy on human rights in Latin America, contact Eric Olson, Winifred Tate, or Laurie Freeman at WOLA, (202) 797-2171.

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