HOME BEST PLACE TO WIN DRUG WAR

The Gazette joined newspapers across the country on Monday in
featuring 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 www1.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 guerilla 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?

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, guerillas 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.