Not long ago, U.S. Intelligence investigators announced the results of a study — apparently, we are losing the war on drugs. For some strange reason this story seems to be news only to the people who fight this most futile and frustrating of all wars. But here it is, the official claim we're losing the war on drugs.

For example, according to this report, opium production has quadrupled since the 1980s. The 1980s, as many of us remember, marked the beginning of a major and ever-escalating onslaught against drug production. But despite an extraordinarily expensive war, including deaths and casualties of uniformed American military personnel in foreign lands, opium production went up, not down.

Huge criminal organizations in Afghanistan, Burma and Pakistan have staked out autonomous regions of opium production. The drug war has made these groups rich enough that they operate as sovereign governments. The legal governments under which they ostensibly live have been rendered either impotent shells or partners in crime. Criminal drug organizations are purely the creation of the drug war. The enormous profits made available to them because of the drug war has allowed them to create efficient, modern armies — in effect, creating departments of defense to protect themselves. Some of these organizations sprawl across national boundaries creating new political realities. In Burma, a drug general named Khun Sa commands an army of at least 20,000 soldiers. Khun Sa pays for this enormous military and political apparatus by exporting heroin — all made possible by the drug war. No war, no money.

The drug war has created other giant criminal countries besides those in Asian nations. We may read about spectacular arrests of major South American drug kingpins who once captained important cartels, but the drug business is too vast and too rich to be stopped by these arrests. Armed with profits that soar beyond 65 percent, drug organizations secure technically advances weapons systems, intelligence-gathering mechanisms, and even marketing and distribution expertise, often from graduates of America's best universities. The drug war is so profitable to criminals that it has brought heroin production to South America. Thanks to the drug war, organizations that used to manufacture only cocaine, today grow opium and produce heroin, too.

U.S. Intelligence officials estimate that some South American drug organizations spend tens of billions of dollars just in operating expenses. Their reach and political clout exceed that of long-established countries in the region. Their ability to produce illegal product is staggering. Stockpiles of cocaine and heroin in South America alone are so great that they far exceed the demand for these drugs here in the United States. With inventories this large, drug seizures, of any amount, are meaningless. There is simply no way to stop contraband from entering the country if the contraband is measured in metric tons. Some of it is bound to get through. It is this state of war that has created the profits, the inventories, and the sophisticated criminal apparatus behind these operations. In other words, American taxpayers have spent billions of dollars, trying to obliterate drug traffic and have instead created a monster.

The drug war monster continues to grow and continues to corrupt otherwise untainted entities. Ordinary governments, police forces and military organizations escape the taint of drug money only with difficulty. Around the world (and even here at home), we have seen officialdom sometimes fall prey to greed. Just like the prohibition against alcohol two generations ago, official corruption undermines public respect and subverts obedience to the laW. This doesn't do anyone any good; and yet it is an inevitable result of a state of war. War, by definition, is a condition not governed by law but by the force of arms.

War is an emergency. Social conventions usually considered fundamental to civilized life are sometimes suspended during emergencies. Humiliating drug testing, surveillance of ordinary workers, and extraordinary powers of search and seizure have become commonplace in war-torn America. If, 30 years ago, we told the man on the street the way we live today, he might have thought it improbable. We have eroded basic civil rights erroneously believing that, somehow, we would gain in return a reduced amount of traffic in illegal drugs. But giving up some of our civil rights has done nothing to restrain illegal drugs. All it has done is to make us less free.

It has also made everyone more suspicious. The war has shaken society right down to the family, our basic social unit and the foundation from which all civilization proceeds. Today, parents buy secret testing kits to detect drug use by children. Children report parents to the police. Such lack of trust is a national product of war. We have seen it from Nazi Germany to Communist China, anywhere belligerent governments mangle freedom.

We should be asking ourselves, to what end are we fighting this war? We should ask ourselves, why fight a war against a medical condition, at all? We do not arrest cancer patients. We do not seize the property of people with tuberculosis. So why do we persecute people who are addicted to drugs? Why don't we treat them? Why don't we let maintenance addicts simply take their drugs safely under medical supervision? If we did this, if we took control of the administration of drugs and took that control away from criminal organizations, we would destroy the profit motive for smuggling drugs. We could begin the long process back to normalcy and begin to restore trust. But drug peace is not likely to replace the drug war any time soon. The profits and advantages of war are shared equally between factions who deal in crime and by those who dish out punishment. The huge budgets on both sides are simply overwhelming.

Medical science had recognized drug addiction as a serious disease for a long time. And medical science has developed specific therapies to alleviate drug addiction. The military and law enforcement have also tried their hand at assuaging drug addiction but the "force-of-arms therapy" seems inadequate to the task.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a sampling of 43 metropolitan area hospitals, reveals that a total of 8,541 people die each year from taking illegal drugs. This is a large number, but nowhere near the number of people who die accidentally from legal drugs. The number of people who die accidentally from legal drugs is 180,000. That is 21 times the number of people who die from illegal drugs, but there is not "war" against legal drugs.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study not long ago identifying "adverse drug events." Health professionals sometimes make mistakes, and other health professionals jump to correct these mistakes. Most of these drug accidents are avoidable. Adverse drug interactions and inappropriate dosage make up the bulk of them. Computerized records and improved communications can reduce the numbers of deaths by legal drugs and health professionals are moving swiftly to do just that.

No one would suggest that we launch a war against all these deaths by legal drugs. None of the authors of the study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggest calling the police or the Army or that they should send in the Marines.

Of course the way things are going, who knows what will come next in the withering, wasteful, ongoing war on drugs? All we know is what the government tells us: their latest announcement, is that we're losing.