Volume 35, Number 20 · December 22, 1988
The War on Cocaine
By Michael Massing
With each passing month, the 'war on drugs' looks increasingly like the war in Vietnam. The more money and manpower we pour into it, the more the enemy seems to advance. During the last five years, the budget of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has almost doubled, to more than half a billion dollars. Over the same period, the staff of the US Customs Service has grown from 12,000 to 16,000. To detect smugglers, the Reagan administration set up a national interdiction center in El Paso, Texas, installed radar-bearing blimps on the Mexican border, and sent sophisticated AWACS planes over the Caribbean. In Latin America, CIA agents are gathering intelligence on cocaine producers, the State Department is deploying expensive Huey helicopters, and the Green Berets are instructing local policemen in the art of paramilitary war.
Feature, 8698 words
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