Still on drugs.

The war on drugs may be the longest-running conflict since the Hundred Years' War. Every politician declares it; every Administration wages it; and it fails time and time again.

Now, in the fall of 1996, we're hearing the drumbeat roll and the trumpets blare for another enlistment, another engagement. Bob Dole and Bill Clinton alike are sounding the call. But the last thing we need is a more militarized society, courtesy of our drug policy. Already, our rights to privacy have been drawn and quartered as a result of the war on drugs.

More wiretapping and more unrestrained searches and seizures will not eradicate the drug problem. But they will eradicate our constitutional rights.

Nor will stationing troops from San Diego to Texas stop the influx of drugs into this country, though it will drain our treasury in the process.

Nor will destroying coca plants throughout South America solve the drug problem, though it will ruin the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of indigenous farmers.

The problem with drugs is not a supply problem, but a demand problem. And the demand is homegrown, right here in the United States. As long as that demand is as strong as it is today, the supply will rise to meet it: Other countries will take up the slack; other ports of entry will open.

If we were serious about ending drug abuse, we would look at the reasons people use drugs.

In part, it's because our culture bombards us with a single message: Consume, consume, consume. Madison Avenue tells us that a new beer, a new hairstyle, a new toothpaste, or a new car will bring instant sex appeal and satisfaction, and drugs are just one more quick fix to happiness, American-style.

And in part, drugs are an escape from devastation: from the loss of jobs, the loss of promise, the loss of hope that afflicts much of our nation.

The war on drugs will never be won until we solve the larger problems besetting America.

But that is not what our leading politicians have in mind. Dole especially is ready to let loose the military to stamp out drugs.

"We must start with a plan to use our military power, particularly our technological capabilities, to fight this battle, to involve our intelligence agencies, including the CIA, in this effort," he told the American Legion in early September.

Funny he should mention the CIA. Two weeks before Dole's speech, the San Jose Mercury News published a massive, three-part investigative story on the CIA and crack-peddling during the contra war in the 1980s.

The series, written by Gary Webb, shows how the CIA illegally raised money for the contras in the 1980s by introducing crack cocaine to the gangs of inner-city Los Angeles. Such was the beginning of the crack epidemic.

"This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the `crack' capital of the world." Webb writes. "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America--and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons."

Webb makes the point that while the contra war is now a distant memory, "black America is still dealing with its poisonous side effects. Urban neighborhoods are grappling with legions of homeless crack addicts. Thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine--a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army brought it into South-Central in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices."

If Bob Dole wants to get at one major drug supplier, he might want to take a close look at Langley.