Text: 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report

("Policy and Program Overview" summarizes main developments) (5530)

The U.S. State Department's 1999 report on international narcotics
production and trade says that current anti-drug programs are
succeeding in disrupting production and trafficking patterns,
tightening law enforcement systems and strengthening measures against
money laundering.

The 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released
March 1, nevertheless says that the drug trade remains a "formidable
enemy," with "access to financial resources available to few national
governments."

Traffickers become more sophisticated each year, the report says,
adapting to counternarcotics strategies and retaining the ability to
move hundreds of tons of cocaine to markets in the United States and
Europe as well as to Latin America, Asia, Africa and the former Soviet
Union.

"In what resembles economic alchemy, drug syndicates transform an
intrinsically cheap, available, and easily renewable commodity (e.g.,
coca leaves) into an almost inconceivably remunerative product," the
report says. "In terms of weight and availability, there is currently
no commodity more lucrative than drugs."

It points out that the U.S. government's fiscal year 2000 budget for
international drug control operations is about $1,500 million dollars.
"That is the street value of approximately 16 metric tons of cocaine.
The Mexican drug cartels have lost that much in a few shipments and
barely felt the loss."

The wealth they accumulate gives to the syndicates "an almost
unlimited capacity to corrupt," the report says. "In many ways the
drug syndicates are a greater threat to democratic government than
many insurgent movements."

The most striking single development in the drug trade in 1999,
according to the report, was "the continuing, steady decline in the
Andean coca crop, the source of all the cocaine destined for the
United States." The numbers reflect a rise in coca production in
Colombia but sharp declines in Peru and Bolivia, the former top world
producers.

The report notes the Clinton administration's proposed $1,300 million
assistance program to Colombia to support anti-drug efforts in that
country as well as strengthen democracy and revitalize the economy.

The document reports "worrisome signs" of increasing use of heroin by
young people in the United States, with most of it coming in 1999 from
Colombia or Mexico, although those two countries account for less than
six percent of world opium poppy production.

The report argues that the annual U.S. process to certify that
countries are cooperating with international efforts to stem the drug
trade has been an effective means of shedding light on drug
corruption, which it says needs darkness to survive. "Though
controversial, throughout the 14 years it has been in effect the
certification process has proved to be a powerful policy instrument,"
the report says. "Its strength lies in its reliance on public, rather
than on traditional diplomacy. In a sharp departure from the
confidentiality inherent in traditional bilateral diplomacy, public
diplomacy stresses openness and transparency.

"Because of its public nature, the drug certification process makes
every government concerned publicly accountable for its actions,
including the United States," the report says. "While the United
States Government obviously cannot certify itself, most governments
recognize that the President of the United States cannot issue such an
important public declaration without being certain of -- and held
accountable for -- his facts. The goal of the certification process is
not to sanction; it is to hold all countries to a commonly
acknowledged international standard of cooperation. By its nature it
also exposes the United States to full public scrutiny by the rest of
the international community. We become as accountable as any other
country for our successes and our failings. As uncomfortable as it may
be for all concerned, it is a healthy process."

The full 1999 narcotics report is available on the State Department
Web site at:

http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1999_narc_report/index.htm

Following is an excerpt from the "Policy and Program Development"
chapter of the report:

(begin text)

POLICY AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

POLICY AND PROGRAM OVERVIEW FOR 1999

The drug trade had little to celebrate at the end of the twentieth
century. Successful international counternarcotics efforts over the
past few years have gradually narrowed the drug syndicates' field of
action. Crop reduction and chemical control programs have caused major
shifts in cultivation and refining operations. Effective law
enforcement operations have fragmented the large cartels that once
dominated the cocaine trade. Better interdiction now forces
traffickers constantly to shift transportation routes to move drugs to
market. Improved judicial systems make it more difficult for drug
criminals to buy their freedom, while tougher extradition laws deny
them the national safehaven they once could count on. Also, closer
international cooperation among governments and financial institutions
has made it more difficult for the drug trade to legitimize its
profits through money laundering schemes.

The most striking change at the end of 1999 was the continuing, steady
decline in the Andean coca crop, the source of all the cocaine
destined for the United States. Even taking into account a marked
expansion of cultivation in Colombia, overall Andean coca cultivation
totals are at a new low. The most dramatic declines occurred in Peru
and Bolivia, formerly the world's two principal coca producers. They
now rank a distant second and third behind Colombia. At the end of
1999, coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia was at its lowest point
since 1986, when we completed the first accurate surveys of Andean
coca.

The joint effort first begun in 1995 to sever the "airbridge" that
carried Peruvian coca to Colombian refineries and then to eradicate
coca crops paid big dividends by the end of the decade. Of the 115,300
hectares of coca under cultivation in Peru in 1995, only 38,700
hectares remained at the end of 1999 -- a drop of two thirds. But Peru
was not the only success story. During the same four-year period in
Bolivia, Bolivian government eradication programs cut coca cultivation
by more than half, from 48,600 hectares to 21,800 hectares. By any
measure, these are remarkable accomplishments. Reductions on this
scale were only possible through close, long-term cooperation between
the governments of the United States and all of the governments
concerned. They are tangible proof of what can be achieved when
committed governments work together effectively toward a common goal.

There was also some bad news in 1999. Coca cultivation in Colombia
increased by 20 percent. The expansion in the Colombian coca crop,
however, came as no surprise. It was a predictable consequence of the
successes in Peru and Bolivia. Faced by the ultimate loss of its major
source of coca -- and thereby a large source of its income -- the
Colombian drug trade has been racing to make up for the shortfall in
the other two Andean producers. Realizing that the only way to have a
guaranteed source of coca was to plant it in lands under their
immediate control, the Colombian syndicates have been steadily moving
cultivation to the conflict-ridden south and southwest of the country.
Since cocaine profits also in part fund Colombia's principal
insurgency, the convergence of interests has led to expanded
cultivation in guerrilla-dominated territory, where security
conditions make it difficult for the central government to conduct
eradication operations. Through this displacement, Colombian cocaine
syndicates expanded the coca crop from the 101,800 hectares at the end
of 1998 to the current estimate of 122,500 hectares. Yet even with
this expansion in coca, the total Andean coca crop at the end of 1999
stood at 183,000 hectares, the lowest figure since 1987.

Another disturbing development is confirmation that the Colombian
syndicates have achieved extraordinary levels of efficiency in
extracting cocaine from their coca crops. While, as we have reported
in earlier INCSRs, we had anecdotal information that Colombian cocaine
yields might be greater than initially reported, scientific
confirmation did not come until 1999. Fieldwork carried out under
Operation Breakthrough, an interagency yield study that has been under
way for much of the past decade in the Andean region, indicates that
higher yielding varieties of coca are being grown in parts of
Colombia. Likewise, preliminary reporting suggests that Colombian
laboratory operators are more efficient in processing coca leaf into
cocaine base than previously believed. As a result, we adjusted
upwards our estimates of potential cocaine HCl production in Colombia
over the past five years. In 1999, Colombian refiners potentially
produced 520 metric tons of cocaine HCl, a twenty percent increase
over the comparable amount for 1998. Yet, even with that enormous
ratcheting up of Colombian production, reductions in Peru and Bolivia
brought total potential HCl from the Andean countries to 765 metric
tons, a five-year adjusted low.

To help Colombia address the problem of drug expansion, the United
States has proposed a two-year, $1.3 billion assistance package to
strengthen Colombian democracy and reinvigorate the economy, at the
same time as we attack the drug trade. In addition to coca
eradication, this assistance will help train special counternarcotics
battalions, purchase additional helicopters, upgrade the Colombian
government's interdiction capability, promote alternative development,
and increase the protection of human rights.

Cutting heroin flows to the United States also ranks high on our list
of counternarcotics priorities. Though heroin abuse is still
relatively limited, there are worrisome signs of increasing use,
especially by young people. Stopping heroin at the source is more
difficult than attacking cocaine supply. To do so we have to limit
cultivation of opium poppy, from which heroin is refined. Unlike coca,
which only grows in three Andean countries, the opium poppy can be
found in nearly every region of the world. Also, unlike coca, opium is
an annual crop and in Latin America can produce as many as three
harvests per year. Where a perennial coca bush may not become
productive for about two years, one can harvest opium gum an average
of four months after planting. A further obstacle to U.S. efforts to
limit its cultivation is that nearly 80 percent of the world's
estimated opium poppy (141,000 hectares out of some 178,000) is
cultivated in Burma and Afghanistan, countries where the United States
has limited influence.

The opium poppies that interest us most, however, are those grown in
Colombia and Mexico. Though these two countries together cultivate
less than six percent of the world's total opium poppy, their
production has a significant impact on the United States. Most of the
heroin identified in the United States in 1999 was of Colombian or
Mexican origin. With such a small crop supplying such a large share of
the market, opium poppy control programs in those two countries can
seriously affect the flow of heroin to the U.S. The United States
Government estimates that in 1999 Mexico took out of production some
7,900 hectares, leaving 3,600 hectares for opium production. This is
the lowest figure since 1992. In Colombia, however, opium poppy
cultivation increased by 23 percent to 7,500 hectares. This figure
would have been much larger had Colombian authorities not destroyed
more than 8,000 hectares of opium poppy in 1999.

DRUG SYNDICATES SUFFER 

Capturing key traffickers demonstrates -- to the criminals and to the
governments fighting them alike -- that the syndicates are highly
vulnerable to coordinated international pressure sustained over time.
In the Western Hemisphere, the drug syndicates continued to suffer
reverses, as key governments pursued the leaders of the major
organizations. In October 1999, Operation Millennium, a joint effort
involving the Colombian and U.S. governments, resulted in the arrest
of scores of major Colombian traffickers. More significantly, it
disrupted an international drug trafficking network that reached as
far as Peru, the United States, and Europe.

Mexico continued to strike at the Juarez cartel. In 1999, Mexican law
enforcement and military units moved against the remnants of the
Carrillo Fuentes Organization operating in the state of Quintana Roo,
especially in the resort city of Cancun. The Government of Mexico
formally indicted Quintana Roo's governor, Mario Villanueva Madrid, on
numerous drug trafficking charges stemming from his association with
Alcides Ramon Magana. Until late 1998, Magana, in collusion with
remnants of the cartel, had been coordinating multi-ton cocaine
shipments from Colombia into the Yucatan. The ex-governor is a
currently a fugitive. Also among those arrested was Juan Quintero
Payan, co-founder of the Juarez Cartel.

PROMOTING INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

An underlying premise of our international drug control strategy has
been to promote long term change in key national institutions of the
main drug source and transit countries. Through training programs
conducted by the principal U.S. Government law enforcement agencies,
we have helped governments to modernize and professionalize law
enforcement agencies. In an effort to narrow the opportunities for
manipulation by the drug trade, we have worked to assist governments
in strengthening their judicial and banking systems. Without a
professional judicial system based on the rule of law and administered
by officials of integrity, the best law enforcement operations can
come to naught. There have been instances where law enforcement
agencies in key drug-affected countries have captured and jailed
prominent traffickers, only to see them set free by the arbitrary
decision of a single judge or magistrate. Thanks to several
long-standing cooperative administration of justice programs, such
instances are becoming rarer. In 1999, several countries continued to
modernize their laws and professionalize their court systems through
reforms ranging from installing more modern equipment to major changes
in the way judges are appointed. Though there will undoubtedly
continue to be instances of judges arbitrarily dismissing evidence
against or releasing well known drug traffickers, we can expect to see
the number of such cases decline, as governments make basic reforms
such as giving judges better pay and greater personal protection,
while streamlining administrative procedures.

EXTRADITION

Aside from dying at the hands of their rivals, there is perhaps no
sanction that drug lords fear more than extradition to the United
States. The long sentences already meted out to notorious
international drug criminals by U.S. courts are stark reminders of
what can happen to even the most powerful cartel leaders when they are
subject to a justice system that they cannot manipulate through bribes
and intimidation. Extradition for such crimes, however, is still far
from universal. In many countries, where sovereign jurisdiction is
politically sensitive, the laws still prohibit the extradition of
their nationals. Powerful drug criminals are adept at exploiting such
national sensitivities to their advantage. For example, a ban on
extradition in the 1980's and 90's allowed the Medellin and Cali
cartels to use their prisons as a high-security drug operations
center.

In November, Colombia marked an important turning point in
counternarcotics cooperation. Colombian authorities extradited a
Colombian citizen to the United States for the first time in nine
years, fulfilling one of the United States Government's most
sought-after but elusive counternarcotics goals in that country.
Despite narcotics traffickers' attempts to throw up legal roadblocks,
and at least one bombing possibly linked to the extraditions, the
Colombian government now appears ready to send narcotics traffickers
to justice in the United States regardless of citizenship. The
Colombian government's courageous decision to reverse the ban on
extradition diminishes the possibility of a domestic safehaven to the
current generation of drug syndicates. Other countries that extradited
nationals to the United States in 1999 were Mexico and Pakistan. We
hope to see similar actions by other countries whose nationals
currently enjoy legal or de facto immunity from extradition.

MONEY LAUNDERING

No matter how large the profits of the drug trade, drug money is
worthless until it can be moved into legitimate financial and
commercial channels. Disguising deposits of hundreds of millions of
illegal dollars is not easy. International drug syndicates probably
devote as much energy and ingenuity to finding ways of legitimizing
their profits as they do to producing and moving drugs. They have been
forced to become more creative thanks to international success in
gradually closing off the drug trade's back avenues to international
banking and financial systems. Working with our partners in the
Financial Action and Caribbean Financial Action Task Forces, in 1999
we focused on expanding collective measures to make it as difficult as
possible for the drug trade to legitimize its illicit fortune,
especially in offshore financial institutions that accept money with
few questions asked. Though several countries' financial institutions
are still willing to turn a blind eye to -- or even solicit -- funds
of questionable provenance, there has been progress over the past
year. Thailand, for example, passed money-laundering legislation
called for in the 1988 U.N. Drug Convention. Such actions move us
closer to our common goal of eventually excluding drug money
altogether from the international financial system.

THE DRUG TRADE -- A FORMIDABLE OPPONENT

Though we can take pride in our progress at the end of the century, we
are still a long way from putting the drug trade out of business. As
one of the pillars of international organized crime, it remains a
formidable enemy. It has access to financial resources available to
few national governments, without formal restraints on how they can be
used. The drug syndicates also have the advantage of experience. Long
before transnational crime had become recognized as a genuine threat
to international stability, the Colombian and Mexican syndicates
already had in place an impressive network of supply centers,
distribution networks, foreign bases, and reliable entree into the
governments of source and transit countries. They pioneered many of
today's advanced money laundering techniques, hiring first-rate
accountants, and investing in state-of-the-art technology. Even after
suffering considerable losses, the drug trade's wealth, power, and
organization equal or even exceed the resources of many governments.

International drug trafficking becomes more sophisticated every year,
as it adapts to counternarcotics offensives. Although our collective
efforts to cut drug traffic in 1999 have kept drug traffickers on the
defensive, they were still able to move hundreds of tons of cocaine
not only to the United States and Western Europe, but to markets in
Latin America, Asia, Africa the NIS and CIS countries. The major drug
trafficking syndicates are the criminal equivalent of large
multinational organizations, with drug distribution centers and money
laundering on every continent. But they are not alone, as Italian,
Albanian, Turkish, Russian, Nigerian, and Southeast Asian crime
syndicates, to name but a few, compete successfully for a share of the
business.

The drug trade also promotes and adapts to changing trafficking and
consumption patterns. It seeks to blur the lines between cocaine,
heroin, and methamphetamine-consuming countries. During the past few
years we have observed more polydrug use, with addicts combining
cocaine and heroin to offset each drug's respective stimulant and
depressant effects. National tastes are also changing. Europe, once
the preserve of the heroin trade, has developed a growing appetite for
cocaine and amphetamines. In parts of Eastern Europe and Russia,
cocaine sells for up to $300 per gram, three times the average cost in
the United States.

In North America, heroin consumption has been gradually increasing, as
cocaine use has declined sharply from skyrocketing use during the
1980's. (Between 1985 and 1998, the number of cocaine users dropped 70
percent, from 5.7 million to 1.8 million estimated users and has not
risen appreciably since.) Although heroin use has not risen
proportionately, the growing willingness of American high school
students to experiment with heroin is disturbing. According to the
1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse released in August 1999,
the rate of initiation for youths from 1994 to 1997 was the highest
since the early 1970s. Though we cannot yet say whether this is the
beginning of a trend, the Colombian and Mexican drug syndicates' major
investment in heroin production indicates that they view the United
States as a lucrative and expanding market for heroin. Given the drug
trade's record in anticipating -- and stimulating -- market demand,
the drug syndicates' persistent cultivation of opium poppy must be a
cause for concern.

DANGEROUS SYNTHETICS: METHAMPHETAMINE AND ECSTASY

Another troubling development is the growing popularity of
methamphetamine and the related drug, MDMA ("Ecstasy"). These
stimulants are now an important and highly lucrative component of the
international illegal drug market. Methamphetamine rivals cocaine as
the stimulant of choice in many parts of the globe. The demand for
methamphetamine and other synthetic stimulants, including amphetamines
and MDMA, has been on the rise not only in the industrialized nations,
but also in many countries of the developing world. In Thailand, for
example, methamphetamine has displaced heroin as the most heavily
abused drug.

The relative ease of manufacturing methamphetamine and the similarity
of the refining process for MDMA appeal as much to small drug
entrepreneurs as to the large international syndicates, since neither
has to rely on vulnerable crops, such as coca or opium poppy.
Synthetics allow individual trafficking organizations to control the
whole process, from manufacture to sale on the street. Synthetics also
have large profit margins and can be made anywhere from commercial
chemicals. Mexico is the principal foreign supplier of methamphetamine
and precursors for the United States, but there are centers of
methamphetamine production in countries as far apart as Burma, Poland,
Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and North Korea. The United States
has its own domestic methamphetamine production, as demonstrated in
1999 by the seizure of 1,916 methamphetamine laboratories by DEA and
another 1,984 by state and local authorities.

Ecstasy, an amphetamine derivative, is another drug that is growing in
popularity. Ecstasy first gained notoriety in the 1990's along with
the "rave culture" that swept over Europe's younger generation.
Ecstasy's stimulant properties furnished the chemically induced
stamina to dance for hours at all-night discotheque parties known as
"raves." It has now developed an international cult following, as one
can see from Internet sites that give detailed instructions on how to
make and use MDMA "safely." Most of the MDMA available on the European
drug market is manufactured in clandestine laboratories in the
Netherlands and in Poland.

One pernicious aspect of Ecstasy is that many of its users do not
consider it a dangerous drug. It is seen as a non-addictive stimulant.
When an addictive drug develops a reputation for being relatively
benign, efforts to suppress it become correspondingly difficult.
Seizure data in many of this year's INCSR country chapters indicate a
surge in Ecstasy consumption in Europe, suggesting that the drug's
popularity is on the rise. France and Estonia are cases in point. But
we have our own Ecstasy problems. The University of Michigan's
Monitoring the Future study noted a rise in Ecstasy use by high school
students. In 1999, slightly more than four percent and five percent of
tenth and twelfth graders respectively reported using the drug.

PRECURSOR CHEMICALS

But even synthetics have their Achilles' heel. Traffickers who
manufacture stimulants and other synthetic drugs need precursor
chemicals that they cannot produce themselves. Whereas opiates and
cocaine require widely available and relatively substitutable
"essential chemicals," amphetamine production requires "precursor
chemicals", such as ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine.
These chemicals have important but fewer legitimate uses and are
commercially traded in smaller quantities to discrete users. It is
crucial to chemical control that each country have an effective,
flexible system that regulates the flow of key precursor chemicals,
without undue burdens on legitimate commerce. For that reason, the
United States, the European Commission, and the U.N.'s International
Narcotics Control Board worked in 1999 with key governments to
strengthen an informal multilateral system of information exchange on
chemicals.

CONTROLLING DRUG SUPPLY

Our mission is to stem the flow of drugs to the United States. How
effectively we do so depends on our ability to attack drug supply at
critical points along a five-point grower-to-user chain linking the
consumer in the U.S. to the grower in a source country. Where cocaine
or heroin are concerned, the chain begins with the growers cultivating
coca or opium poppies, for instance, in the Andes or Burma, and ends
with the cocaine or heroin user in a U.S. town or city. In between,
lie the processing (drug refining), transit (shipping), and wholesale
distribution links.

Our international counternarcotics programs target the first three
links of the grower to user chain: cultivation, processing, and
transit. The nearer to the source we can attack, the greater our
chances of halting drug flows altogether. Where crops are destroyed or
left unharvested, no drugs can enter the system. It is analogous to
removing a malignant tumor before it can metastasize. Crop control is
by far the most cost-effective means of cutting supply. In an ideal
world, with drugs halted at the source, none could enter the
distribution chain and there would be no need for costly enforcement
and interdiction operations.

In the real world of counternarcotics programs, however, crop control
has enormous political and economic implications for the producing
country, for it inevitably means attacking the livelihood of an
important sector of the population. Implementing crop control programs
takes time, as governments develop alternatives for the affected
population. As a result, while pursuing the goal of crop elimination,
we cannot neglect the processing and distribution stages. Our programs
therefore must constantly direct resources toward those links where we
can have both an immediate and a long-term result.

Though eradication is the most direct way of eliminating a drug crop,
it is not the only way. In many countries, large-scale eradication is
neither politically nor socially feasible. As our experience the past
few years in Peru and Bolivia has shown, the right combination of
effective law enforcement actions and alternative development programs
can produce truly remarkable results. We therefore work closely with
the governments of the coca growing countries to find the best way to
eliminate illegal coca in any given national context.

REDUCING COCA

The coca crop offers the best prospect for dramatic reductions for
several reasons. Coca is confined to a specific geographical region.
Significant coca cultivation takes place in only three countries --
Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia -- and with modern technology we can
locate the growing areas precisely. Thus, unlike a multi-ton load of
finished cocaine distributed among trucks, boats, and aircraft, a coca
field is a large, stationary target. Eliminating coca on the ground is
also highly cost-effective. Current studies indicate that in Bolivia
and Peru, where alkaloid content is high, every 200 hectares of coca
taken out of production deprives the drug trade on average of a metric
ton of refined cocaine. So even manual eradication can make a
difference. But our high-speed spray aircraft offer a more effective
alternative. If these planes had unobstructed access to the principal
coca plantations, they could destroy a large percentage of the coca
crop in a matter of months using environmentally safe herbicides.

Because the situation varies from country to country, the United
States Government has been working with each Andean government to find
the best way to eliminate illegal coca in the light of prevailing
local conditions. Crop reduction successes in Peru, Bolivia, and the
traditional growing areas of Colombia have created a new situation by
driving coca production into areas in southern and southwestern
Colombia controlled by the insurgency. The situation has therefore
become simultaneously better defined and more dangerous. The
concentration of coca cultivation in a geographically confined area
gives counternarcotics spray aircraft a better target. But the
determination of the guerrillas and the drug trade to protect their
vital source of income by quasi-military action poses a new level of
threat to eradication aircraft that were not designed for use in
hostile environments. The United States Government's proposed $1.3
billion narcotics assistance to Colombia over the next two years
should offer new possibilities of dealing with this problem.

POLITICAL WILL

While cooperative anti-drug programs have proven their value, the most
powerful defense against the drug trade is an intangible -- political
will. If political will is weak where organized crime is strong,
corruption soon sets in. Left unopposed, such corruption ultimately
vitiates the rule of law and puts democratic government in jeopardy.
Consequently, a basic objective of U.S. counternarcotics policy is to
prevent drug interests from becoming entrenched by bolstering
political will to oppose illicit drug trade in the key source and
transit countries. In those countries where political leaders have had
the courage to sacrifice short-term economic and political
considerations in favor of the long-term national interest, we have
seen the drug trade weaken. And where political will has faltered, the
drug syndicates have prospered accordingly.

THE POWER TO CORRUPT

The drug trade's ability to subvert even relatively strong societies
stems from its access to nearly unlimited amounts of money. In what
resembles economic alchemy, drug syndicates transform an intrinsically
cheap, available, and easily renewable commodity (e.g., coca leaves)
into an almost inconceivably remunerative product. In terms of weight
and availability, there is currently no commodity more lucrative than
drugs. Illegal drugs are relatively cheap to produce and offer
enormous profit margins that allow the drug trade to generate criminal
revenues on a scale without historic precedent. At an average retail
street price of one hundred dollars a gram, a metric ton of pure
cocaine has a retail value of $100 million on the streets of a U.S.
city -- two or three times as much if the drug is cut with
adulterants. By this gauge, the 100 or so metric tons of cocaine that
the United States Government typically seizes each year are
theoretically worth as much as $10 billion to the drug trade -- more
than the gross domestic product of many countries. Even if only a
portion of these profits returns directly to the drug syndicates, we
are still speaking of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of
dollars. To put these sums into perspective, in fiscal year 2000 the
United States Government's overall budget for international drug
control operations is approximately one and half billion dollars. That
is the street value of approximately 16 metric tons of cocaine. The
Mexican drug cartels have lost that much in a few shipments and barely
felt the loss.

Such boundless wealth offers the large trafficking organizations an
almost unlimited capacity to corrupt. Though less obvious, in many
ways the drug syndicates are a greater threat to democratic government
than many insurgent movements. Guerrilla armies or political terrorist
organizations seek to topple and replace governments through overt
violence. The drug syndicates, on the other hand, covertly seek to
manipulate existing governments to their advantage and guarantee
themselves a secure operating environment. They can do so only by
co-opting the right officials. A real fear of democratic leaders
should be that one day the drug trade might take de facto control of a
country by putting a majority of elected officials, including the
president, directly or indirectly on its payroll. Though it has yet to
happen, in the past few years there have been some disquieting
near-misses. By keeping the focus on eliminating corruption, we can
forestall the possibility of a government manipulated by drug lords
from ever becoming a reality.

THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS AND CORRUPTION

Drug corruption thrives in the shadows. It needs anonymity for
survival. Since it shuns the light, the best way to attack drug
corruption is to expose it regularly to public scrutiny. The drug
certification process offers a means of forcing corruption to the
surface. It gives the U.S. government the legislative equivalent of an
international spotlight to shine on corruption. Section 490 of the
Foreign Assistance Act requires the President to certify annually that
each major drug producing or transit country has cooperated fully or
has taken adequate steps on its own to meet the goals and objectives
of the 1988 U.N. Convention, including rooting out public corruption.
Governments that do not meet the standard lose eligibility for most
forms of U.S. military and development assistance; they also face a
mandatory "no" vote by the United States Government on loans in six
multilateral development banks.

CONTROVERSIAL BUT EFFECTIVE

By now, most governments know that U.S. law requires the President to
provide this annual assessment of counternarcotics cooperation based
on factual information. Setting certification benchmarks is not a
unilateral process. Through regular and sustained consultation
throughout the year, we work with our partners to establish realistic,
mutually acceptable goals for certification evaluation purposes, based
on goals and objectives of the U.N. Convention. Though controversial,
throughout the 14 years it has been in effect the certification
process has proved to be a powerful policy instrument. Its strength
lies in its reliance on public, rather than on traditional diplomacy.
In a sharp departure from the confidentiality inherent in traditional
bilateral diplomacy, public diplomacy stresses openness and
transparency. Because of its public nature, the drug certification
process makes every government concerned publicly accountable for its
actions, including the United States. While the United States
Government obviously cannot certify itself, most governments recognize
that the President of the United States cannot issue such an important
public declaration without being certain of -- and held accountable
for -- his facts. The goal of the certification process is not to
sanction; it is to hold all countries to a commonly acknowledged
international standard of cooperation. By its nature it also exposes
the United States to full public scrutiny by the rest of the
international community. We become as accountable as any other country
for our successes and our failings. As uncomfortable as it may be for
all concerned, it is a healthy process.

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(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov)