WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO KEEP OUT KIDS OFF DRUGS?

Newspapers across the country recently featured an advertisement authored
by the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. Superimposed
across the dimly lit, somber face of a young man -- your son, perhaps? --
are his purported words, ''On Saturday, I watched my little brother,
rehearsed with the band and helped bribe a judge to release a man nicknamed
'The Butcher.' '' Below his image there's this admonition: ''Drug money
helps support terror. Buy drugs and you could be supporting it, too. Get
the facts at theantidrug.com. Get help at the National Treatment Hotline,
800-662-HELP.''

The Web site includes a reiteration of the now well-worn story that
terrorist cells and guerrilla movements make money off of the illegal drug
trade. Presumably, the aforementioned ''Butcher'' is one of myriad
no-goodniks clogging the corrupt court system of some hapless,
drug-trafficking Third World land. One site link directs visitors to
President Bush's recent observation -- offering new spin on Sept. 11 -
that, '' ... the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining
terrorists,'' and that, ''If you quit drugs, you join the fight against
terror in America.''

It would seem to follow, of course, that if you choose not to quit drugs,
you are aiding and abetting terror. Indeed, you are a traitor to your
country, right?

Perhaps it's hard to blame the federal government's anti-drug warriors for
so ham-handed an attempt to exploit last year's attack on America; that
fateful date already has been appropriated for so many other causes in
similarly pre-textual ways.

And, anyway, who doesn't want to keep people, especially young people, from
polluting their minds through drug abuse? So, whatever works, right?

If only this latest campaign didn't beg so desperately for credulity. Much
like its many predecessor campaigns, this newest drug-war pitch serves for
the most part to illustrate how stubbornly Uncle Sam clings to his sense of
denial.

Certainly, taking a puff of marijuana could conceivably benefit some
terrorist network somewhere or, at the very least, some thuggish
individuals. Just as there also was a time when taking even a sip of beer
could have been said to enrich mafiosi like the fabled Al Capone, who made
a mint running banned brew across the border from Canada during Prohibition.

The difference, if it need be pointed out, is that beer is now perfectly
legal and heavily taxed while pot isn't. Thus, the purveyors of the one
have become venerable corporate citizens who underwrite the ballparks that
bear their names. The purveyors of the other, well, are terrorists,
guerrillas and the like.

It's axiomatic: When a good or a service is outlawed, outlaws provide it.
Amid unabated demand, the price is right and offers all the incentive they
need. And if they're locked up by the law or killed off by rivals, there
always are more outlaws waiting to step in.

That doesn't mean society should throw in the towel, particularly regarding
drug experimentation by young people.

Rather, drugs, alcohol and many, many other temptations for the young
should be first and foremost a matter for parental intervention. Parents
cannot be everywhere, but they are the best, the first and the last line of
defense against ill influences. Their efforts can and do lead to
abstinence; surely, their success rate is no shabbier than the
government's, for all of our tax dollars it spends and all the people it
imprisons in the name of keeping our kids off of drugs.

Maybe in the broader context of that bloody, costly drug war, ads linking
terrorism and drug use -- in other words, the tautology that bad guys have
few qualms about doing illegal things -- are benign. At worst, they insult
the intelligence.

But they also help obscure the truth that the real drug war only can be won
at home, not in Washington.

- -- The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.).