SAVING AMERICANS FROM THE BONG THREAT

Mood Enhancement Should Be None Of Government's Business.

NEW YORK -- With America tensely poised in recent days against the
possibility of new terrorist attacks, vigilant, machine-gun-toting
National Guardsmen are becoming common in New York's subway stations.
Thus, Attorney General John Ashcroft recently targeted a fearsome
threat: marijuana pipes.

Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter encompassed raids on
drug paraphernalia manufacturers, distributors and their homes. At
least 60 people have been arrested for supplying pipes, bongs and
roach clips.

They face up to three years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. "This
illegal billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law
enforcement," Ashcroft roared on Feb. 24.

And his muscle matched his volume. On the very day that New York state
officials announced that they would dispatch 113 vans to detect and
combat chemical and biological weapons, Washington arranged a massive
attack on this harrowing menace.

"Including federal, state and local officials, our estimate is about
1,200 were involved, just on that day," Drug Enforcement Agency
spokesman Will Glaspy says by phone. Among them, "easily hundreds" of
U.S. agents were deployed, "about 103 U.S. Marshals alone," Justice
spokesman Drew Wade adds. "It was just exhaustive."

The Feds responsible include prosecutors in 11 U.S. attorneys' offices
from southern California to western Pennsylvania. Rather than guard
America's docks and porous borders from the next Mohamed Atta, Customs
and Immigration and Naturalization Service personnel joined the
anti-pipe posse.

This federal overreach featured an unhealthy dose of rhetorical
overkill. "People selling drug paraphernalia," said acting DEA chief
John Brown, "are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a
part of criminal homicide." Yes, and wine-glass makers cause
drunk-driving deaths.

This is futile and foolish.

Those who light pot pipes are not our enemies. They are our
colleagues, neighbors, friends and loved ones. In short, they are
Americans who should be protected rather than persecuted by federal
busybodies who desperately need to focus on first things.

"There is no evidence that these laws have any impact on reducing
drug use whatsoever," said Drug Policy Alliance founder Ethan
Nadelmann. Household products, such as empty toilet paper rolls and
foil, can serve as crude marijuana pipes. Unless Aschroft eradicates
Charmin and Reynolds Wrap, people who choose to smoke marijuana will
do so. Also, they simply could visit tobacconists and buy pipes like
the one Sherlock Holmes puffed, perhaps inspiring intense laugh attacks.

Drug warriors must recognize that some 11 million American adults
enjoy getting high at least annually -- to giggle, relax and endure
these nerve-wracking times. Some brave this endless winter, the
drooping Dow, the Columbia disaster, the Rhode Island nightclub
inferno and growing war jitters by sipping martinis. Others play Lotto
or visit Vegas. Still more sleep around. In excess, these behaviors
can ruin one's health, fortunes or both. Yet only smoking grass yields
jail time. This is silly, illogical and wicked.

Adults who use drug paraphernalia while handling automobiles or
wrecking balls deserve punishment. Minors should steer clear of the
stuff until adulthood. That aside, mood enhancement should be none of
government's business.

While this was true before the late, great Twin Towers collapsed, it
is doubly so today. Federal law enforcers should be single-minded if
not obsessive about foiling "3-11," "4-11" or whatever we may have to
dub the next 9-11.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said Feb. 11 that "several hundred"
al-Qaeda-linked terrorists may be here today. Perhaps they now cherish
U.S. liberties, abundance and amusements. If they indeed embrace the
American way, welcome. More likely, though, they strive to turn crop
dusters into anthrax dispensers, or water supplies into streams of
cyanide -- as Italian officials allege a suspected al-Qaeda cell
planned for Rome last year.

British authorities arrested six Algerians in London who, they
believe, possessed ricin, a toxin that kills via respiratory arrest or
vascular collapse. It may be here in the hands of people who want us
dead.

Neither Americans who smoke grass nor their roach-clip salesmen seek
to kill anyone. They would sob if the Sears Tower were awash in flames.

Their backpacks likelier contain bluegrass CDs than plastic
explosives.

Those who light pot pipes are not our enemies. They are our
colleagues, neighbors, friends and loved ones. In short, they are
Americans who should be protected rather than persecuted by federal
busybodies who desperately need to focus on first things. John
Ashcroft, John Brown and this country's other drug warlords should ask
themselves what would be worse for America's citizens: more bong hits
or more body parts.

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the
Scripps Howard News Service.