Post by Bozur on Nov 24, 2005 1:18:42 GMT -5
Cocaine Prices Rise and Quality Declines, White House Says
By JUAN FORERO
Published: November 18, 2005
Correction Appended
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 17 - After years of disappointing news about the easy availability of cocaine on American streets, the Bush administration on Thursday said its multibillion-dollar drug war in Colombia was showing signs of success, with the retail price of the drug in the United States sharply higher and the level of purity lower.
From February to September, the price of a gram of cocaine rose 19 percent, to $170, while the purity level fell 15 percent, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said.
White House officials said those trends were consistent with a shortage of cocaine and validated the United States' $4 billion, multiyear plan to wipe out cocaine drug crops in Colombia through aerial spraying.
"These numbers confirm that the levels of interdiction, the levels of eradication, have reduced the availability of cocaine in the United States," John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Washington. "There's a change in availability. The policy is working."
But drug policy analysts critical of the administration's war on drugs said the White House was drawing unrealistically rosy conclusions from too short a period. They noted that a Rand Corporation study for the White House in 2003 showed that as the war on drugs had expanded since 1981, the price of cocaine had tumbled to historic lows while purity levels had risen.
Drug policy analysts also said that like any commodity, the price of cocaine sometimes fluctuates wildly. Yet the cocaine trade remains intractably lucrative, they said.
"Cocaine is not like computer chips, where new technology makes it cheaper and cheaper," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an independent New York group that says the war on drugs has been counterproductive. "A small blip upward after so many years of decline in price and increase in purity is essentially meaningless."
Since 2000, American officials have insisted that an aggressive push to spray land used for Colombia's huge drug crops with glyphosate would pay off. Hundreds of thousands of acres, many in a swath of southern Colombia held by Marxist rebels, have been sprayed.
But this year, even after reporting that 336,000 acres of coca plants had been sprayed in 2004, the White House acknowledged that the amount of coca across Colombia was "statistically unchanged" from 2003.
Coca cultivation has spread to most states, growers are planting more potent strains and the amount of cocaine Colombia produces is still more than enough to satisfy American demand.
Right-wing paramilitary commanders have continued trafficking much of Colombia's cocaine, fearing little from the administration of President Álvaro Uribe, which has granted generous concessions shielding them from serious punishment as they participate in a government-sponsored disarmament process. Human rights groups and some Colombian political leaders say that the paramilitaries are evolving into a Mafia-like organization that depends on the cocaine trade.
John Walsh, who follows American drug policy for the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy analysis group, said cocaine trafficking regularly rebounded after difficult periods. When Colombia dismantled the Medellín cocaine cartel in the late 1980's and began an offensive against the Cali cartel in the mid-1990's, "cocaine price increases, while obvious, were equally obviously short-lived," he said. "They were quite ephemeral."
Still, the American government says the overall picture is positive: its figures show that seizures of cocaine are way up and that cocaine use among some sectors of the American population has declined.
The White House said the newest figures were just the start of a positive trend. Officials say that trend took time to develop because the traffickers had probably overproduced when the spraying effort began and for months used stockpiles of cocaine to supply American consumers.
"We kept watching this and watching this and that started to change," David Murray, a drug policy analyst at the White House, said of the price and purity figures. "Nobody is saying victory. We're just finding a figure that's consistent with some of the other data sets we had."
-------------------------
(Prices are rounded and taken from a chart in NYT)
1981-$540/
1982-$580/
1983-$470/
1984-$400/
1985-$395/
1986-$300/
1987-$250/
1988-$225/
1989-$195/
1990-$230/
1991-$200/
1992-$155/
1993-$160/
1994-$145/
1995-$185/
1996-$150/
1997-$145/
1998-$125/
1999-$130/
2000-$160/
2001-$165/
2002-$120/
2003-$105/
High Cost
White House figures show a recent increase in the price of powder cocaine, rising from about $140 per pure gram in February 2005 to $170 in September. But the price is still far lower than it was in the 1980s.
By JUAN FORERO
Published: November 18, 2005
Correction Appended
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 17 - After years of disappointing news about the easy availability of cocaine on American streets, the Bush administration on Thursday said its multibillion-dollar drug war in Colombia was showing signs of success, with the retail price of the drug in the United States sharply higher and the level of purity lower.
From February to September, the price of a gram of cocaine rose 19 percent, to $170, while the purity level fell 15 percent, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said.
White House officials said those trends were consistent with a shortage of cocaine and validated the United States' $4 billion, multiyear plan to wipe out cocaine drug crops in Colombia through aerial spraying.
"These numbers confirm that the levels of interdiction, the levels of eradication, have reduced the availability of cocaine in the United States," John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Washington. "There's a change in availability. The policy is working."
But drug policy analysts critical of the administration's war on drugs said the White House was drawing unrealistically rosy conclusions from too short a period. They noted that a Rand Corporation study for the White House in 2003 showed that as the war on drugs had expanded since 1981, the price of cocaine had tumbled to historic lows while purity levels had risen.
Drug policy analysts also said that like any commodity, the price of cocaine sometimes fluctuates wildly. Yet the cocaine trade remains intractably lucrative, they said.
"Cocaine is not like computer chips, where new technology makes it cheaper and cheaper," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an independent New York group that says the war on drugs has been counterproductive. "A small blip upward after so many years of decline in price and increase in purity is essentially meaningless."
Since 2000, American officials have insisted that an aggressive push to spray land used for Colombia's huge drug crops with glyphosate would pay off. Hundreds of thousands of acres, many in a swath of southern Colombia held by Marxist rebels, have been sprayed.
But this year, even after reporting that 336,000 acres of coca plants had been sprayed in 2004, the White House acknowledged that the amount of coca across Colombia was "statistically unchanged" from 2003.
Coca cultivation has spread to most states, growers are planting more potent strains and the amount of cocaine Colombia produces is still more than enough to satisfy American demand.
Right-wing paramilitary commanders have continued trafficking much of Colombia's cocaine, fearing little from the administration of President Álvaro Uribe, which has granted generous concessions shielding them from serious punishment as they participate in a government-sponsored disarmament process. Human rights groups and some Colombian political leaders say that the paramilitaries are evolving into a Mafia-like organization that depends on the cocaine trade.
John Walsh, who follows American drug policy for the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy analysis group, said cocaine trafficking regularly rebounded after difficult periods. When Colombia dismantled the Medellín cocaine cartel in the late 1980's and began an offensive against the Cali cartel in the mid-1990's, "cocaine price increases, while obvious, were equally obviously short-lived," he said. "They were quite ephemeral."
Still, the American government says the overall picture is positive: its figures show that seizures of cocaine are way up and that cocaine use among some sectors of the American population has declined.
The White House said the newest figures were just the start of a positive trend. Officials say that trend took time to develop because the traffickers had probably overproduced when the spraying effort began and for months used stockpiles of cocaine to supply American consumers.
"We kept watching this and watching this and that started to change," David Murray, a drug policy analyst at the White House, said of the price and purity figures. "Nobody is saying victory. We're just finding a figure that's consistent with some of the other data sets we had."
-------------------------
(Prices are rounded and taken from a chart in NYT)
1981-$540/
1982-$580/
1983-$470/
1984-$400/
1985-$395/
1986-$300/
1987-$250/
1988-$225/
1989-$195/
1990-$230/
1991-$200/
1992-$155/
1993-$160/
1994-$145/
1995-$185/
1996-$150/
1997-$145/
1998-$125/
1999-$130/
2000-$160/
2001-$165/
2002-$120/
2003-$105/
High Cost
White House figures show a recent increase in the price of powder cocaine, rising from about $140 per pure gram in February 2005 to $170 in September. But the price is still far lower than it was in the 1980s.