THE REAL WAR VS. THE DRUG WAR

On Oct. 25, six weeks after the worst terrorist atrocities in our history,
the United States was bombing Afghanistan, Colin Powell was discussing a
post-Taliban government, investigators were grappling with anthrax in the
mail, and federal agents were... well, they were going after pot smokers in
California. If John Ashcroft had been around during the Chicago fire, he
would have been handcuffing jaywalkers.

During his campaign, President Bush took the position that access to
medical marijuana was a matter for the states to address without
interference from meddlesome Washington bureaucrats. "I believe each state
can choose that decision as they so choose," he declared in his peerless
rhetorical style. Californians agreed. In 1996, they had approved a ballot
initiative sanctioning the therapeutic use of marijuana.

But even with the war on terror demanding so much of the government's
attention, the administration was not too busy - or too respectful of state
prerogatives - to raid the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. Drug
Enforcement Administration officers seized computers, 400 marijuana plants
and medical records for hundreds of patients. Those sick people suddenly
found themselves cut off from the drug recommended by their physicians for
such problems as chemotherapy- induced nausea.

For the last two decades, our leaders have treated the enforcement of drug
laws as the moral equivalent of war. On Sept. 11, it became blindingly
clear that there really is no moral equivalent of war.

War, we were reminded, is when foreign enemies are trying to kill as many
of us as they can. Cokeheads and dope smokers, whatever their shortcomings,
don't have that mission. The al Qaeda terrorists do.

But until the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, police and
prosecutors were more likely to worry about busting potheads than rooting
out Islamic zealots with dreams of mass murder. A Boston TV station
reported that a few years ago, the FBI squeezed one local al Qaeda member
for information about heroin smuggling, but showed a conspicuous lack of
interest in what he told them about Arab terrorists.

Discrepancies like that raise questions about why we are - or were - so
obsessed with preventing people from ingesting recreational substances that
may not be optimal for their health. We don't send cops out to arrest
alcoholics because they abuse liquor, or imprison smokers because they have
a tobacco habit. Why, then, is the use of marijuana or cocaine a law
enforcement matter?

For the last couple of decades, it's been the primary law enforcement
concern. The federal government employs some 30,000 drug enforcement
personnel, and drug offenders make up 60 percent of federal prison inmates.
Police arrest 600,000 people every year for mere possession of marijuana.

But that preoccupation can no longer be indulged. In the years to come,
drugs are bound to get much less attention. The new head of the U.S.
Customs Service says terrorism has displaced drugs as his central concern.
"Terrorism is our highest priority, bar none," Robert Bonner declared in
October. "Ninety-eight percent of my attention as commissioner of customs
has been devoted to that one issue."

The FBI has made the same turnabout. It's planning an overhaul that will
greatly de-emphasize drug trafficking - which now consumes nearly a fourth
of its budget. DEA agents have even been shifted to the terrorism battle.
Even Attorney General Ashcroft has said, "We cannot do everything we once
did, because lives now depend on us doing a few things very well."

State and municipal police also have turned their attention toward homeland
security and away from drugs. If prosecutors have to spend more of their
time going after terrorists, they will have to spend less time on something
else. It's not murders and bank robberies that are going to be abandoned -
it's drug cases. Why? For the simple reason, which we could ignore before,
that they have little effect on public safety.

Drug enforcement has not just stolen resources from anti-terrorism efforts
- - it has actually helped the terrorists. The opium trade furnished one of
the major sources of funding for the Taliban during the time it ruled
Afghanistan. The main reason the drug business was so profitable for the
Taliban is that it's illegal: Prices are always higher in black markets
than in legal ones. Every time we helped eradicate poppy fields in Mexico
or Colombia, we enriched the criminal regime in Kabul.

Nowadays, we may see our true priorities more clearly. The days when drugs
topped the list of public concerns now seem like the time before Adam and
Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The drug war was the luxury of a
society with few really terrible problems. Three months ago, it became an
unaffordable extravagance.