When they didn't, we tried something else. A strange contemporary exception to that tradition is the war on drugs. By any rational test it is an overwhelming failure. Yet our leading politicians persist in calling for ever more stringent measures to enforce the policy of total prohibition, doing their best to prevent even a discussion of alternatives. Yet the use of forbidden drugs remains a reality of American life.
Supplies are plentiful despite costly attempts to stop the production of drugs in other countries.
The human cost of the drug war is worse than the financial cost. Yes, there is. It is explored in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, in an illuminating article by Ethan A. Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center in New York, a drug policy research institute. The alternative is to acknowledge what Americans came to understand about alcohol after 14 years of the noble experiment, Prohibition. That is, as Mr. Nadelmann puts it, ''that drugs are here to stay, and that we have no choice but to learn how to live with them so that they cause the least possible harm.'' The harm-reduction approach to drugs is in growing use throughout Europe.