White House insists that amount of cocaine on US streets is falling

Mathea Falco, the president of Drug Strategies, a drug policy research institute in Washington, said she hasn’t seen a drop in cocaine availability in the United States or an increase in prices, indicating no shortage of the drug.

"I’d love to see his evidence," Falco, a former top US State Department counternarcotics official, said in a telephone interview. "It will certainly be an extraordinary occurrence if that happens. Nobody has seen an increase in the price."

Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, came to Colombia to discuss the war on drugs and to inaugurate a helicopter base for Colombia’s Anti-Narcotics Police in Guaymaral, outside Bogota, the capital.

Walters told a news conference he is sure a report to be released by his office in two weeks will show a decline in the availability of cocaine in the United States, although he added that he did not have specific figures yet.

"I am certain we will see a change in availability," he said.

The United States has spent billions of dollars over the past five years under the so-called Plan Colombia to fumigate drug crops and train local forces battling leftist rebels and far-right paramilitary groups that control much of the drug trade.

Plan Colombia has led to huge increases in cocaine seizures, while closer judicial cooperation has allowed for more than 300 alleged traffickers to be extradited to the United States for trial in the past four years.

But a report by Walters’ office earlier this year said that despite a record-setting aerial eradication offensive in Colombia, the world’s main producer of cocaine, more acres of coca remained in Colombia at the end of 2004 than were left in 2003 after spraying.

Walters yesterday insisted that authorities have now turned a corner in the war on drugs.

"Many who thought this was impossible, that this beast could not be stopped are wrong," he said at the news conference alongside Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos and top police and anti-drug officials.

Santos said Colombian authorities will increase the pressure on smuggling gangs.

"The only future for a trafficker is jail, the seizure of his assets and — if he faces criminal charges abroad — extradition," he said.