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Phil took a day off from his reporting to visit the famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, but coca seems to be everywhere... stunted coca plant in garden, Machu Picchu (click this post's title link or the "read full post" link for more pictures -- not coca or drug policy, but breathtaking)

I haven't yet watched the Lou Dobbs piece on the marijuana legalization movement, but it is has already been made available for viewing on YouTube, here. I am very interested to read comments -- hopefully posted here to the blog -- from those of you who have seen it. There is an online poll running on CNN from the Lou Dobbs Tonight home page. If it's still going when you read this blog post, please go there and vote. At latest count Dobbs was losing big-time -- 79-21%! So there. Read my takeoff on Dobbs' drug war editorial if you haven't already, in this week's Chronicle or here.

As blowhards like Lou Dobbs call for escalation in the war on drugs, even the White House is singing a different tune. From The Washington Times:

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- President Bush's new budget calls for deep cuts in the leading U.S. program to fight drug trafficking in the Andean region, amid growing clashes over drug policy between Washington and leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia.
…

"It would be the largest across-the-board reduction in aid since the war on drugs began," said one U.S. diplomatic official, who asked not to be named.

It's refreshing to see ordinarily smug drug warriors decline to be named. That's to be expected when their opposition comes from the White House rather than the drug policy reform movement.

There's nothing to debate here. The Andean Counterdrug Initiative has failed utterly and everyone knows it. It has caused great devastation, but the one thing it has not done is reduce the availability of drugs in the U.S.

Meanwhile, The Miami Herald reports that Ecuador is evicting U.S. anti-drug forces from our only military stronghold in South America.

They are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where the Bush administration now has few reliable allies.

''We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil,'' Correa said.

This is the kind of humiliating defeat that makes drug war addicts like Joe Biden call for biological warfare in South America. It's a reminder that the drug war won’t end with a public apology, but rather a quiet-as-possible reallocation of funds.

When the war finally ends, it will be at the hands of Congress and the Executive branch. It won’t be at the hands of the "deep-pocketed pro-drug lobby," for there truly is no such thing. We're just a group of people who recognize, as even the White House sometimes does, that there are always better things to do with a billion dollars than trying to stop people from getting high.