Last week, the feds released their annual “Monitoring the Future” survey on teenage drug use, and — lo and behold — teenage drug use is down. John Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, hailed the findings as proof that Bush’s drug war was going swell (unlike, ahem, that other war of his). Well, in an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times, Mike Males of the Center on Juevenile and Criminal Justice demonstrates that the “Drug War” isn’t going any better than the “Iraq War.” Drug arrests are skyrocketing, as is the body count from drug overdoses. Even more striking is the fact that middle age drug use is soaring and that it’s soaring primarily among middle class whites. Ongoing tales about lights at the end of tunnels are no more reliable than similar tales about Iraq.

While it should be obvious to any fair-minded observer that our increasingly brutal war on drugs is a losing proposition on all counts, few of us seem to be fair minded observers. So allow me to pose a question to those of you still clinging to this benighted enterprise: Exactly what would it take to convince you that the drug war was causing more harm than good? Is there any bit of data, any hypothetical fact, or anything at all that would cause you to give up the policy ghost? Because if there is not, then we are in the realm of religious belief — and that’s about all that I can find to support this cruel, costly, and counterproductive jihad.