STRAIGHT DOPE: DISPATCHES FROM THE DRUG WAR

Apparently finding it difficult to nab violent drug offenders and kingpin types, Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey is going after easier prey. In an article published in September's Chess Life magazine, McCaffrey suggests that tournament chess players be "checked" for drugs.

"Research proves that mentoring youngsters and teaching them that games like chess can build resilience in the face of illegal drug use and other destructive temptations," writes McCaffrey, citing the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy and its drug-prevention program, Chesschild. "Drug testing is as appropriate for chess players as for shot-putters, or any competitors who use their heads as well as their hands."

Of course. Most people who play the game of kings drop acid and shoot junk -- helps them with their game. Bishops can do a lot more than diagonal on LSD.

"Just when I thought I'd heard it all from McCaffrey," said Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a little shocked by the notion. "What's next from this overreaching drug czar? Drug testing for tiddlywinks players?"

"Policy recommendations like this ... demonstrate a deep and disturbing pathology that goes well beyond opposing drug law reform efforts."

Treat this!

Finding that incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein is burrowed into her U.S. Senate seat like a rabid badger under a tree stump, Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Campbell, is switching campaign gears, throwing all of his political eggs in the drug-law reform basket.

Rep. Campbell's approach is two-pronged.

For starters, Campbell wants a cease-and-desist on prosecuting drug addicts and champions a California ballot measure that would drop junkies in rehab programs instead of jail to listen to hip-hop remixes of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."

Prong No. 2 is a bit sharper. "While shifting the emphasis to treatment," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "Campbell said the war on drug dealers should escalate, and include the death penalty for anyone who sells heroin, cocaine or methamphetamines to children under 12, even if the child does not die from the drugs." Yikes.

Deal with stoners, stone the dealers.

"I'm a pragmatist," says Campbell, widely recognized as the House GOP member whose cows graze furthest from home. "I look at a system now that is clearly broken, clearly a failure, and I'm prepared to try alternative routes to solving this problem."

Alternatives, sure; like maybe ending the drug war -- period. But, considering how thorough, judicious and thoughtful law enforcement has been about prosecuting the drug war thus far, I don't even trust the government with treatment, let alone termination. Given his position about drug-war incompetence, you'd think Campbell would figure this out on his own.

Oh well, maybe he hasn't thought through the ramifications. Maybe it's just a campaign ploy. Or, maybe, somebody's been slipping something into his brownies.

Bring out the big guns In case you were wondering how much "war" there really is in the drug war, according to the Sept. 21 Washington Times, "Colombian police have resumed using .50-caliber machine guns in the war against drugs after problems encountered with the weapons were fixed last month."

.50 -caliber machine guns?

Since most of us are firearm illiterate these days, let me just remind you that this is not the gun your aunt carries in her purse to ward off carjackers, muggers and overly fresh parking attendants. Rambo, you'll recall, used one at the end of "First Blood" to obliterate half a town. According to the Colombian officials, the guns work well for obliterating narcoterrorists too.

Doughboys or dopeboys?

In another case of the drug war meeting real war, U.S. military personnel are popping Ecstasy pills in greater numbers than ever before, according to a testing officer in the Pentagon's Office of the Coordinator for Drug Enforcement Policy and Support. As Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough report in their Sept. 22 WND column, the officer claims use of the designer drug has "increased markedly."

Results from 2,273,998 urine drug tests conducted by the Pentagon in fiscal year 1999 include:

Marijuana positives, 12,006 Cocaine positives, 2,839 Methamphetamine positives, 807 Ecstasy positives, 432 LSD positives, 325

Despite the fact that grunts and officers caught powdery-white-handed are either discharged or reassigned to Stony Lonesome, some military personnel can't keep their hands off the hash.

The military is one of the most tightly regulated social environments in the entire U.S. -- and drug use is still uncontrollable. So what on earth, sensible people might wonder, makes the drug warriors think that they can control dope in the rest of society if they can't even control it in the military, of all places?

If you want to talk pipe dreams, this would be a great place to start.