PLACE MORE IMPORTANCE ON HEALING ADDICTION THAN ENFORCING DRUG LAWS

Snapshots from a nation at "war"...

Eleven people executed on a mountain trail in Colombia -- for the crime of
wanting to study a volcano.

Government-funded narco squads using heat-sensing technology to peer inside
your home, just in case you're up to no good (they could be parked outside
your house right now).

Skeletons bleached white in the hot desert sun of southwest Texas, the
remains of peasant "mules" who traded their lives to drug-runners for the
chance of finding a better life in the United States.

Blacks, Mexicans and poor whites, strip-searched and humiliated on the
highways because they look like the drug-smuggling "type."

Prisons crammed with non-violent "criminals" who cost just as much to feed
and house as the murderers and rapists we want locked up.

This is not the America we were supposed to inherit, this nation that locks
up one of every three black men, sends people to prison for life for
supplying commodities used by an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the
population and destabilizes other nations so we can do the politically
expedient thing.

You can say it doesn't affect you -- but you'd be wrong. Just ask the folks
trapped during the shootout in an Irving sporting-goods store that claimed
the life of a cop.

Because our prisons are already overcrowded again -- mainly from the
fallout of our drug war -- guards are overworked and obviously unable to
keep the worst of the worst corralled. I've heard from local corrections
officers who recite scary statistics about keeping watch over dozens of
prisoners -- by themselves.

State prison authorities will tell you seven inmates broke out of a
facility in Kenedy because the guards weren't paying attention. The guards
at that unit, however, say it was too crowded to watch all the prisoners
all the time.

The men who busted out of the Kenedy unit weren't there for drugs. They
were sent to prison because they killed, raped, kidnapped and tortured. One
of them beat a small child to death.

But because we're determined to punish drug offenders like we punish
killers, rapists and kidnappers, we can't really do a decent job with
either group.

Nothing new about that, though, is there? You're probably getting as tired
of reading these columns as I am of writing them.

What's changed is the leadership of the drug war. Bill Clinton put more
people in prison for drugs than any other president, ever. He escalated
anti-drug efforts in South America, ensuring more murder in Colombia by
donating millions of our tax dollars to that nation's corrupt government.

Weren't we lucky to have a president who was so determined to keep a rein
on our morals?

This is my fear for the next four years. I always suspected that Billy
Bob's heart was never really in the war on drugs. But because his political
opponents got a lot of mileage out of his "radical" past -- which, after
all, was only as radical as his need to establish a politically correct
stance against the Vietnam War -- Clinton always felt the need to bend over
backwards to prove his opposition to drugs.

So now we have a new president -- who has the same kind of past. George
W.'s record includes a drunken-driving conviction and a sneaking suspicion,
shared by just about everybody in the nation, that he snorted a little
go-go powder in his misspent youth.

Despite the drug-war posturing that he showed off during a recent visit to
Mexico, I have high hopes -- no pun intended -- for at least a partial
retreat in our drug war. These days, it's the conservatives in Bush' own
party, not the "Acid, Amnesty and Abortion" liberals of the 1970s, who are
beginning to call for a surrender.

My fear: Like Clinton, Bush will believe he has something to prove, and
nothing to lose, by beefing up the front-line fight and closing down the
medics' tent.

My hope: Unlike Clinton, Bush will realize that most Americans place less
emphasis on the fighting here and abroad and more importance on healing at
the homefront.

The elder Bush never grasped that concept. He lost his job while he was
mucking around in foreign affairs and neglecting domestic issues.

His son, meanwhile, has a chance to perform a major overhaul on the
nation's drug policy. More importantly, he's got the conservative pedigree
to pull it off -- if he can avoid the Clinton trap and realize that his
past doesn't need to dictate foreign policy.