Despite the billions being spent on drug interdiction and eradication as part of "Plan Colombia," retail cocaine prices fell 11 percent between February 2005 and October 2006, drug czar John Walters acknowledged in a letter to a leading Republican lawmaker.

Average cocaine purity also increased, Walters said.

The Associated Press reported April 27 that Walters told Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that cocaine prices have fallen to $135 per gram, about the same price as in the early 1990s and far short of the $600 per gram the drug cost in 1981.

ONDCP has repeatedly asserted that Plan Colombia has made cocaine more expensive and less potent for U.S. consumers.

Grassley, the co-chair of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, said the data showed that while the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) "has gotten quite good at spinning the numbers ... cooking the books doesn't help our efforts to curb cocaine and heroin production and consumption."

During a recent visit to Bogota, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) was fed older and more encouraging data on cocaine price and purity by U.S. antidrug officials, even though the report cited by Walters in his letter was already available. "We've given this program a chance to work and clearly this is not producing the results we were promised," McGovern said. "Cocaine is priced as low and purity is as high as it was before Plan Colombia began six years and $5 billion ago."

"When the data show a brief rise in cocaine prices, the drug czar holds a high-profile press conference," said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Center for International Policy. "But when the trend goes back down again, the drug czar sends it in a letter to one senator. Why is that?"