ADDICTION'S UNCEASING ASSAULT

The words weren't that scary, but they still sent a chill through my
body when I heard them.

``There's not a family in this country that hasn't been affected by
drugs,'' said Florida's new ``drug czar,'' James McDonough, as we were
having lunch last week.

My thoughts jumped to my immediate family. To my knowledge, no one has
fallen victim to the scourge of illegal narcotics that has devastated
so many American lives and communities. But if you count my extended
family, particularly some cousins, it's a different story.

Although I've never used drugs, I've been close to people who have.
The person who stands out the most was my oldest friend, a guy I had
been close to since I was 3, who got hooked on heroin while serving in
Vietnam. When he died at age 36, most of his family blamed the war for
his early expiration. I blamed the drugs - and his decision to use
them.

My friend's death coincided with the beginning of the so-called War
on Drugs - a term McDonough, a combat-wounded veteran who also served
in Vietnam, doesn't like because there's no visible enemy and no
clear-cut strategy for final victory.

JUST WHO OR WHAT is the enemy in the War on Drugs? William Bennett,
the nation's first drug czar during the Bush administration, believes
the enemy is the moral decay of the individual.

``The illegal drug problem in the United States today began as part of
the radical political and moral criticism of the late 1960s and in the
1970s,'' said Bennett. ``Themes of revolution, liberation, and drugs
were intertwined in popular music, in other parts of the entertainment
industry, in the press, on university campuses and in some quarters of
the media.''

The rebellious hippies of the 1960s and the anti-war movement of the
late 1960s and early 1970s - if one accepts the moral poverty theory
of Bennett - brainwashed perfectly nice kids into a counterculture of
insubordinate, sexually promiscuous, drug-stoned youth.

Dan Baum, in his cover comments to his book ``Smoke and Mirrors,''
explores the moral-decadence view of illegal drug use as a political
hoax. He writes: ``At one time or another, the War on Drugs has been
made to serve almost everybody: parents appalled by their teens'
behavior, police starved for revenue, conservative politicians
pandering to their constituents' moral dudgeon, liberal politicians
needing a chance to look tough, presidents looking for distractions
from scandal.''

Baum adds: ``The War on Drugs is about a lot of things, but only
rarely is it about drugs.''

PERHAPS WE NEED to stop looking at the drug problem as a war - us
against them - and, as McDonough suggests, see it as a cancer that is
capable of striking anyone at any time. Although, like cancer, drug
abuse might be more prevalent with some segments of our society than
others, no one is immune.

If we take that approach, we can finally admit that right now we don't
have a cure for the problem. However, we can take steps to keep as
many people as possible from getting the affliction. As with cancer,
we do that with education (prevention) and treatment if it fails. We
also have to do what we can to get rid of the carcinogens (drug
smugglers and dealers) in our midst.

Law enforcement has done a good job of putting dealers behind bars,
yet drugs are still widely available. That's what makes McDonough's
cancer analogy all the more persuasive.

During the painful experience in Vietnam, many Americans had a hard
time coming to the realization that it was not a conventional war and
that they couldn't choose between victory and defeat - only endless
stalemate.

It's the same with drugs, only we can't pull out of this conflict; the
stakes are too high. Even if we can't see a light at the end of the
tunnel, we have to keep moving forward.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune columnist and editorial
writer