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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020301/ts_nm/crime_drugs
_report_dc_3
U.S. Omits Colombian Coca Figure From Drug Report
Fri Mar 1, 5:03 PM ET
By Jonathan Wright
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States omitted the Colombian coca
production figure -- the most important single statistic -- from its 2001
drug trade report issued on Friday as the CIA (news - web sites) had not yet
provided one, U.S. officials said.
The CIA figure is expected to be much higher than that of the Colombian
government, which this week reported a decline of more than 11 percent in
the 14 months to Nov. 1, 2001. The United Nations (news - web sites)
endorses the Colombian figure.
The production figure for coca, used for making cocaine, could help measure
the success of President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, in which
Washington has invested more than $1 billion in the past two years.
Colombia is by far the largest producer of cocaine in the world, and
supplies more than 80 percent of the drug sold in the United States, the
largest market for cocaine.
A State Department official said the report, which had to be ready in
mid-February, did not include the CIA's Colombian coca figure because it was
not yet available.
"We still don't have the numbers. It will have TBD ('to be determined') in
certain sections," she said.
She said a last-minute delay in releasing the report on Friday was not due
to the Colombian statistics but merely because members of Congress must
receive it before the public.
The CIA would release its Colombian figures to other U.S. government
agencies within a few days, officials said.
Cocaine, heroin and speed in that order worried Washington the most, the
report said. The use of cocaine or its smokable form, "crack," fell among
American 12th graders, who are in their last year of high school, but an
"unsettling" 4.8 percent had still used the drug.
COLOMBIA SAYS CULTIVATION DROPPED
The report said aerial eradication efforts had destroyed thousands of
hectares of Colombian coca in some areas, but pilots faced a tougher task
getting to areas controlled by rebels, and producers were getting better at
increasing crop yields.
It left its figure for Colombian coca cultivation at 136,200 hectares
(336,600 acres) pending new data, but said the figure had probably
increased. It said it was also clear the figure for the finished drug, left
at an estimated 580 metric tons as in 2000, had actually gone up.
The Colombian government said on Wednesday the cultivation of coca had
dropped for the first time in Colombia since the start of Plan Colombia.
A report based on satellite imaging showed coca acreage in Colombia had
fallen more than 11 percent in the 14-month period.
It pegged total coca cultivation at 357,818 acres (144,807 hectares) on Nov.
1, 2001, compared with 403,487 acres (163,289 hectares) on Aug. 31, 2000.
Colombia's anti-narcotics police chief, Gen. Gustavo Socha, attributed the
decline to U.S.-sponsored aerial eradication efforts under Plan Colombia,
which began in 2001.
Klaus Nyholm, the director of the U.N. Drug Control Program in Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador, endorsed the Colombia figure and said he thought the
CIA's number could be significantly higher.
SAMPLE SURVEY
The New York Times said the CIA figure would show production to have
stabilized or even increased during 2001.
The differences may arise from the different methods used. The CIA did a
sample survey of key areas and then made an extrapolation for the whole
country.
Rand Beers, the State Department official in charge of international
narcotics affairs, said on Monday that U.S. production figures for Colombia
were a year old.
But he said the anti-drug campaign in Colombia had yet to bear fruit in the
form of cocaine shortages and higher prices on the streets of American
cities.
Beers said that last year, spray planes, many of them financed with U.S.
aid, sprayed 212,000 of about 340,000 acres(85,000 of about 135,000
hectares) planted with coca.
The farmers often replant their fields with coca, and the United States had
no idea how much cocaine was stockpiled in Colombia or along the chain of
supply to the United States, he added.
"I am not in a position to indicate that there has been at this point in
time an effect on price and availability in the United States. ... I cannot
tell you based on available information that the amount of cocaine that
comes into the United States is less," he added.
Some media reports have said the flow of drugs into the United States may
have even increased in the months since the Sept. 11 attacks because the
U.S. Coast Guard (news - web sites) and Air Force have devoted their
resources to homeland protection.
Robert Brown, a senior official in the White House's anti-drug operation,
said the U.S. government did not know how the redeployments had affected
drug smugglers.
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