Cooperating in the Drug War.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle

TOP ANTI-DRUG OFFICIALS from around the Americas gathered in Washington, D.C., in November to examine trends and strategies for confronting the complex problems associated with illegal drugs. The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Leadership Conference was hosted by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy and the OAS Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD).

At a news conference, Secretary General Cesar Gaviria and the U.S. drug "czar," Barry McCaffrey, talked about the strong political will that now exists among the OAS/CICAD member nations to cooperate in efforts to stem drug consumption, production, and trafficking. "We will work in partnership," McCaffrey said, adding that "cooperation better serves the national interests of these thirty-four nations than confrontation."

The drag policy conference came on the heels of CICAD's approval, in Montevideo, Uruguay, of a new tool designed to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-drug efforts throughout the Hemisphere. Gaviria said the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism, which goes into effect at the beginning of the year, will lead to a "collective learning" about whether each country's policies and programs are working. Recommendations that come out of the evaluation process, he said, will lead to national and regional reforms.

"This mechanism is not about sanctions. It's about cooperation," Gaviria said at the news conference. The fact that U.S. anti-drug efforts will also be evaluated has improved the political climate on the drug issue, Gaviria said.

McCaffrey, for his part, predicted that the new mechanism will prove to be more effective than the U.S. certification law, which he said created "unhelpful" international friction. Only by cooperating, he said, can governments make headway in...