by Jac Wilder VerSteeg

About the author: Jac Wilder VerSteeg is an editorial writer for the Palm Beach Post in Florida.

In August 1999, paramilitary soldiers in Colombia killed 13 people, including a 13-year-old girl, and dumped their bodies by the side of the road—a warning to villagers suspected of dealings with communist rebels. That massacre brought the number of civilians killed in 1999 in Colombia to nearly 850.

For those Americans who use cocaine or heroin, the line between their drug abuse and those murders is not as blurry as they might pretend.

The money Americans spend on drugs finances killers on all sides of Colombia’s civil war, which has killed 35,000 people during the past decade. Combatants’ total drug profits, exact amount unknown for obvious reasons, is estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion annually...