Faltering interdiction efforts

A significant part of President George Bush's drug strategy, interdiction has been largely abandoned by the present Administration. On November 3, 1993, a Presidential statement proclaimed the Administration's new strategy, which referred to a "change of emphasis" (Note 26) including the controlled shift of assets out of the so-called "transit zone." (Note 27) During the same day, commenting on the new policy before a Congressional committee, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, (ONDCP) Lee P. Brown, testified that:

Holding on to programs because they make us look "tough" but accomplish little fails to be honest with the American people, who want a drug strategy that effectively responds to the realities of the drug problem America faces. (Note 28)

Yet, as this report demonstrates, interdiction cuts over the past three years have seriously undermined the U.S. government's interdiction system. The lack of resources committed to interdiction efforts has translated directly to the arrival of drugs on American streets. Interdiction cutbacks have lowered traffickers' cost of doing business, apparently allowing the retail price of drugs to fall at the same time that the number of overdoses and emergency room admissions is increasing.

Because the source countries' productive capacity can always be increased to accommodate losses of product, repeated seizures accom-plish little without law enforcement follow-up against the organization smuggling the drugs. That follow-up is not possible when interdiction assets are unable to respond to a particular smuggling event. In other words, cuts to interdiction capabilities have the potential to hurt the criminal justice "end-game" all the way from arrests of low-level drug smugglers to convictions of high-level drug kingpins.