How much money has the U.S. government spent on Plan Colombia to date?
Since 2000 Colombia has gotten $5.4 billion dollars in aid from the United States. About 80 percent of that has gone to Colombia’s security forces, and most of it has been for [combating] drugs. So spending a billion on Mexico—where interdiction seems to be working, at least for now—seems like a good deal by comparison? Dollar for dollar, I guess interdiction is more effective. The question is whether it will have any long-term impact. Will Mexico find that it has a bigger and growing drug problem if there are huge stocks of cheap cocaine sitting around south of the border? I think that has happened in other countries in the past. Certainly the dealers will turn to the domestic market to try to sell off some of what they have. Of course, they’re selling it for much less money than they can get in the United States. Is there a political aspect to this report that’s come out? Absolutely. First of all, the timing: it’s about a week or two before they plan to ask for a whole bunch of new m
