Gil Kerlikowske, the new drug czar, suggests abandoning the phrase "war on drugs."

National Review, June 8, 2009

Gil Kerlikowske, the new drug czar, suggests abandoning the phrase "war on drugs." "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs,'" he said in his first interview on the job, they "see a war as a war on them. We're not at war with people in this country." Kerlikowske's statement concerns rhetoric, which has been both an obsession and a distraction to this administration.

But rhetoric also has consequences. We have waged a war on drugs for decades, at great cost and to slight effect. NATIONAL REVIEW concluded, more than a decade ago, that "the war on drugs is lost" (Feb. 12, 1996). If the political classes are truly willing to think new thoughts, they have a lot to consider: programs for treatment; choices between legalization, decriminalization, and controlled supply; ways to fight black marketeers. We have put the moment off many, many years. Better late than never.