ONLY LOSERS IN WAR THAT WE CAN'T WIN

On the long list of casualties in the war on drugs we now can add
missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter Charity. The two
were killed when a Peruvian military jet shot down their plane over South
America in the mistaken belief that it was ferrying cocaine. Since Peru
began such aggressive drug interdiction actions in the mid-1990s--at
America's insistence--the military reportedly has forced more than 30
drug-running planes from the sky and seized more than a dozen on the ground.

Yet, Peru, even after considerable reduction in coca plants in recent
years, still grows some 85,000 acres of the stuff used in making cocaine.

The Bowerses are just one recent example of how the U.S. war on drugs, as
virtuous as its intent may be, has had consequences serious enough to call
into question our ineffective approach to America's appetite for illegal
substances. Last Friday, Chicago police claimed that $400,000 in cocaine
was stolen from police storage, fueling the argument that the drug war has
a corrupting influence on law enforcement. On Monday, veteran Chicago cop
Joseph Miedzianowski was convicted of helping gang members sell $2 million
worth of cocaine.

We also have seen how the lure of drug money can be too much for even
normally law-abiding citizens: Beloved Chicago schoolteacher Wardella
Winchester, prosecutors say, helped her son hide hundreds of thousands of
dollars in stolen drug money.

She ended up dead, a bullet in her head. Meanwhile, the bill for prisons
goes up and up and the international community bristles over America's
demands that other nations help save the coke-snorting, pot-smoking,
smack-shooting Uncle Sam from itself.

Nearly 75 percent of Americans say the United States is losing its war on
drugs, and about the same number believe drug use never will disappear, a
new survey by the Pew Research Center reports.

Yet, Pew analysts say, this deep sense of futility has not generated more
momentum for alternative anti-drug strategies, such as increasing treatment
programs or decriminalizing the use of some drugs.

No surprise, really.

What public official would be bold enough to engineer a legitimate
re-examination of the war on drugs?

To do so is to be deemed in favor of poison.

But until the tide changes--a national commission convened by President
Bush to examine drug war alternatives would be a welcome start--the
casualty list will continue to grow and grow.