The eradication answer.

• Author: Murray, David
• Position: LETTERS - Cocaine eradication

Your article about drug policy in Colombia [Elizabeth Dickinson, "Fighting the Last War," January/February 2012] was nicely done and contained many insights. I would venture that the role of forced and sustained eradication, as practiced in Colombia, made some contribution to [Alvaro] Uribe's successes. Such a role has been, of late, minimized in Mexico. Do you consider that piece of the overall Plan Colombia package as having made an important contribution?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

David Murray, PhD

Office of National Drug Control Policy

Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Dickinson responds:

Eradication has been a major part of the Colombian campaign--but it was more incidental than strategic. The effective aspects of Uribe's policy involved retaking massive sweeps of the state that had fallen into lawless hands--or had never lived under the rule of law in the first place. One of the most effective ways to do this was to send troops and police across the country. And on their way, they often participated in manual eradication schemes. The United States helped provide funding and expertise for spraying.

If you look at the absolute numbers of cocaine production in Colombia, however, they don't so much go down as shift geographically. As troops entered one area of the country, the coca production shifted elsewhere, as if a balloon were being squeezed on one side and the air simply moving to another. This has produced more a re organization of coca production than an eradication of it. And it mirrors the crisis in...