"Decriminalization might work if everybody were upper middle class," he says. "But if you're a poor black kid in the inner city and you become addicted, your chance of having a life with any meaning is pretty much zero.

"If you go into the inner cities," he continues, "90 percent of the people there are against decriminalization. The places where legalization is most supported are the universities, the research centers, the ivory towers, because they don't have the firsthand experience with it.

"And what they're really saying is that they don't care about poor people."

Becker took his experience and evolving beliefs-and went again where the action is. Here is how his resume describes his responsibilities in Colombia: Second in command of third largest security assistance program in the world, $240 million in FY 1999. Program is the largest U.S.-funded narcotics program in history. Directly responsible for planning, budgeting, and managing all aspects of police training, institution-strengthening reforms, nationalization programs, and air or ground operations done by 2500 Colombian narcotics police and a 75-aircraft police air service."

Reading between those lines doesn't begin to tell Becker's tale, or what he's accomplished. He faces an evolving sociopolitical puzzle that began years ago as a fight against insurgent guerrillas became a war against drugs. Then, as the drug lords' influence grew and they sought to grow their coca in areas controlled by communist guerrillas, the two illicit forces have in places formed alliances, not for ideology but for «nancial convenience.

Part of the reason Becker is effective is that the government he's helping trusts him. "The Colombian government was unable to control its own officials because they were either being bought off or blown up," Becker explains. "They didn't know who they could trust."

Becker asserts that by starting with even one or two incorruptible officers and building an ever-larger cadre of trustworthy police officers he can slowly transform key enforcement elements. History would support his contention. A few years ago, Colombia's combined police and military force were unable to capture Pablo Escobar, kingpin of the Medellin cartel. Eventually, Escobar negotiated a plea bargain and turned himself in. Then, seemingly at his whim, Escobar escaped. It took millions of dollars, massive U.S. technological support, and practically all of Colombia's anti-drug forces to hunt him down.

By comparison, when this past autumn a few hundred anti-narcotics police were able to arrest 305 drug lords in a single night, something has changed.