From: Jim Rosenfield <[j n r] at [igc.apc.org]>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Date: 30 Oct 93 18:57 PST
Subject: Pentagon: New Drug Approach

UPn  10/28 1800  New Pentagon anti-drug front de-emphasizes interdiction

By CHARLES DOE 

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The U.S. armed forces' anti-drug campaign will
concentrate more on disrupting cocaine production in Latin America
rather than intercepting smugglers at U.S. shores, the Pentagon said
Thursday. 

"We are seeking to assist the countries of South America," said the
Pentagon's top anti-drug policy maker, Brian Sheridan. "The interim
strategy...calls for enhanced support to the source nations." 

As in the past, Sheridan said, U.S. forces would not undertake direct
action against illegal drug producers in such nations as Bolivia,
Columbia and Peru, but would rather assist local authorities to do so. 

"We provide training, communication systems, ground-based radars (and)
planning support," he said 

In order to increase the resources available to concentrate against
foreign drug producers, Sheridan said, the resources devoted to
interception of drug smuggling by ship and aircraft would be cut back. 

"We will continue to do some detection and monitoring of the transit
zone," he said, "but in accordance with the interim national strategy,
we will begin to shift and do less of that." 

In the past, such interception operations using the Air Force's huge
AWACS radar surveillance planes or Navy cruisers equipped with powerful
Aegis antiaircraft radar had taken up as much as 70 percent of the
Pentagon's $1.1 billion annual anti-drug budget. 

The interception effort has been criticized in recent months by a number
of officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno. "General
interdiction, which has been very costly," she said recently, "does not
work." 

But Sheridan said interdiction would not be abandoned, just scaled back.


Much of the remaining effort, he said, will be concentrated in the
southwestern U.S. border area, where 70 percent of the cocaine enters
the country. 

"We will continue to detect and monitor because it does have benefits,"
he said, "It disrupts the traffickers. It forces them to do things they
don't want to do. They have to use means of transport that we know
they'd prefer not to use." 

Sheridan said the military had found ways to do anti-drug surveillance
more efficiently than in the past, using, for example, the Navy's small
but effective TAGOS antisubmarine ships, which are equipped with both
sonar and radar and are largely crewed by civilians. 

"The bottom line for us," he said, "is that we can do the same job we
were asked to do but at a significant savings." 

Such efficiencies, he said, could cut the Pentagon's anti-drug budget
down to about $950 million a year or less. 

The Pentagon's new antidrug strategy is its part of a more general
policy revision announced last week by the Clinton administration's drug
policy director Lee Brown. It emphasizes reduction in the demand for
drugs as well as their supply. 

Copyright 1993 United Press International  
Used with permission.