Washington's antidrug efforts look a bit groggy abroad, while marihuana plants are having a hey-day in the United States...

      For years Washington has been promoting expensive antidrug programs directed at cultivation of drugs in foreign countries. In Latin America it has been estimated that some $6 billion has been earmarked to put an end to a multi-million dollar business, with half of that total dedicated to Colombia.

      Yet for even the least informed observer, the problem of drugs is one of market economics and market economics is supposed to be the golden rule of economics. Supply and demand. Where there are buyers, a seller will find a way to sell. And the buyers are mostly in the United States and Europe, the sellers mostly in the "marginal" areas of the world.

      And so U.S. financed programs are theoretically aimed at reducing supply and thus driving up prices in order to discourage consumption in the U.S. In the form of Plan Colombia, that has meant military aid, combat helicopters, light weapons, intelligence technology, advisers...and resort to fumigation of coca fields--questioned by many critics as having negative effects on the environment as well as on peasants.

      Meanwhile, and in line with the rules of the market, there has been a marked increase in the U.S. of drugs such as marihuana in what appears to be an effort to get around the import restrictions. A study by Jon Gettman, as reported in Clarín, Oct. 15, 2007, indicates that the marihuana harvest in the U.S. brings in some $35 billion dollars. That's more than the combined income from corn and wheat: $30.8 billion.

      Gettman estimated that there are about 56.4 million marihuana plants growing in the sunlight on U.S. fields, and around 11.7 million in people's houses and apartments.

      What would happen if authorities were to use the kind of dangerous sprays used in Colombia and elsewhere to destroy those crops?