The Drug Czar says says that the current cocaine price spike shows progress in the War On Druggies. NPR reports on the story.

For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing "an unprecedented cocaine shortage" due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

But wait. NPR did some fact checking. What did they find?

But fact-checking by NPR reveals that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences.

The price of cocaine is one of the main ways the government tallies the score in its war on drugs. The reasoning is that if prices go up, it means that agents are winning -- they're squeezing the supply. For the past three months, the federal government has been reporting that its counter-drug strategy has created an unprecedented nationwide cocaine shortage.

Walters said reports indicate that these interdictions have choked the cocaine supply in 37 cities across the country. The list included 15 major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Mich., Walters said.

NPR contacted the police departments in each of those 37 cities to find out what narcotics commanders had to say about the reported cocaine shortage.

The results suggest how difficult it is for law enforcement to create any long-term disruption in retail sales in America, which is the largest cocaine market in the world.

And they tend to confirm long-established trends: that price spikes are transitory, and that over time, dealers find other distribution routes, while users may find other drugs.

Ten of the 37 cities confirmed that the cocaine scarcity is real. Among them were the largest cocaine markets in the nation, such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Lt. Daniel Simfer, commander of the vice/narcotics unit in the St. Louis Police Department, said, "In the last six months it has become less available than it was at the beginning of the year. The price has increased accordingly probably by about a third."

Four cities declined to respond to questions about the local cocaine supply; five said there was simply no shortage.

The question brought laughter from Sgt. Roger Johnson of the Detroit Police Department.

"No, we don't have a problem finding it at all," Johnson said.

In Pittsburgh, Commander Sheryl Doubt of the Pittsburgh Police Department said, "I spoke to my detectives out there in the streets making buys, and we all kind of agreed that if there's a shortage here in Pittsburgh, we are not aware of it and don't find that necessarily to be true."

John Carnevale is a former budget director in the drug-control office who served under four former drug czars. He says the office had the Rand Corporation analyze long-term cocaine price trends.

Of the findings, Carnevale said, "One, the long-term trend adjusted for purity has been one of decline. It just keeps coming down and coming down. Two, there's been occasional moments where we've seen spikes in cocaine prices, and they may last three months, four months, five months -- but eventually the trend continues to decline."

And fleeting price spikes, Carnevale said, did not meaningfully affect demand -- another point where he differs with the drug czar.

Well the Drug Czar tells us that after examining the bodily fluids of hundreds of thousands of Americans he has proof of progress that can't be denied.

Further proof of the cocaine shortage, Walters says, is that the nation's largest workplace drug-testing company has observed a 16 percent decline in positive cocaine drug tests during the first half of 2007.

But in an interview, a scientist from that company, Quest Diagnostics, said that during the same period, the company also noticed a nearly 7 percent uptick in methamphetamine detection.

That phenomenon shows the nature of addiction, several police officials said. To the extent there is, or was, a cocaine shortage, they have seen regular users turn to meth, heroin, prescription drugs, and high-potency marijuana. In other words, enforcement had not appeared to curtail demand -- one of the chief aims of the war on drugs.

"The truth is, we see addicts getting drugs even in the worst times," said Sgt. Sutherland of the Washington, D.C., police. "When it's really hard to get it, they'll do just about anything to get some kind of drugs."

The USA Today has noted another positive aspect of the crackdown.

In Cleveland, police noted a contraction in drug markets in January. Homicides are up as local drug organizations vie for the shrinking cocaine supply, says Mayor Frank Jackson, who lauds a six-city, federally led task force for cracking down on local traffickers.

Mayor Jackson had some further comments on the effectiveness of the crack down.

"Interdiction isn't the cure-all. The police cannot solve this problem. It's one leg on the stool."

Cross Posted at Power and Control