ANOTHER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Hudson Institute's Center for Latin American Studies will host John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and President Bush's "Drug Czar," on Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 10 a.m. Walters will discuss the success of Plan Colombia.

Over the past three years there has been a dramatic reduction in cocaine production.... The tide has turned in a 40 year subversion of the rule of law in Colombia....

--press release, August 29, 2005

U.S.-supported counternarcotics programs and policies in Colombia and the Andean region have enjoyed "historic success" and an opportunity exists to sustain these gains and permanently disrupt the efforts of drug traffickers in Colombia and the region, according to the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) John Walters.

...He noted that cocaine production in the Andes has declined by 29 percent since 2001 and pointed out that the region has witnessed three successive years of declining cocaine and heroin production....

"We are heading in the right direction and we are winning," he said.

--U.S. State Department news release, May 11, 2005

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In a blow to the United States' anti-drug campaign here, which cost more than $4 billion, new White House estimates indicate that Colombia's coca crop expanded by nearly 21 percent last year.

Figures released late Friday by the Office of National Drug Control Policy indicate Colombian farmers last year grew 355,680 acres of coca, the raw material for cocaine. That represents a jump of nearly 74,000 acres from 2004 even though U.S. funded crop-dusters destroyed record amounts of coca plants in 2005.

Washington has provided the Bogota government with more than $4 billion, mostly in anti-drug aid since 2000 for a program known as Plan Colombia -- which was supposed to cut coca cultivation by half within six years.

Yet according to the new figures, more coca is now being grown here than when Plan Colombia started...

--Houston Chronicle, April 16, 2006

(Via Skimble.)