But given the trauma caused by the long war with the Medellin cartel, the Colombian Government apparently does not share Washington's view that the Cali drug traffickers should be confronted head-on, despite a pledge by President Gaviria to treat all cartels equally.

[ "We have the same policy toward the Cali cartel as toward the Medellin cartel," the President said in an interview Friday in Bogota. "Simply because the Medellin cartel bore the greatest responsibility for narco-terrorism, we concentrated the largest amount of our efforts there. But our policy is the same."

[ He said he hoped that Cali cartel members would take advantage of his plea-bargain policy to surrender for internment. ] And What of the Consumers?

Many Colombians believe that Government strategy is to maintain sufficient pressure on drug traffickers to contain their activity in this country and induce them to move to neighboring Latin American countries.

Colombian officials maintain that since market forces sustain the cocaine trade, trafficking will end only when demand abates in the United States and Europe.

"The United States is putting on a lot of pressure over the Cali cartel," said Enrique Santos Calderon, a newspaper columnist. "But I don't think the Government is going to gratuitously start up a new 'narco-war.' "

Here in Colombia's third-largest city, the prevailing mood is one of discomfort over the international attention now focused on the local drug traffickers, who long ago wove themselves into Cali's society as seemingly upstanding white-collar citizens.