Drug czar John Walters has been relatively quiet lately. But on a visit through parts of Latin America, he came out with a couple of comments that seem to show he recognizes the utter futiliy of his job.

The Winston-Salem Journal, via the AP, reports tonight that Walters, on a trip to Colombia, outed the primary failure of the U.S. drug war in Latin America:

After flying over blackened coca fields, John Walters, the White House drug czar, conceded that seizing cocaine, destroying coca crops and locking up drug traffickers in Colombia have had little effect on the flow of cocaine on American streets.

"Thus far we have not seen a change of availability in the United States," Walters says later in the article, though he says that will change.

But when?

Well, a Reuters article fills in that detail.

"The estimate is in the next 12 months we will see a reduction in the availability of cocaine in the United States," Walters told reporters during a visit to Mexico.

Reuters also outlines the frank comments of the drug czar on his failures:

"We have not seen yet in all these efforts what we are hoping for on the supply side, which is a reduction in the availability," Walters said.

So in twelve months we can expect less cocaine in the U.S. I am not buying his rhetoric, though unfortunately my tax dollars are.