AND I QUOTE / What Political Books Are Saying : SMOKE AND MIRRORS: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure,<i> By Dan Baum (Little, Brown: $24.95; 340 pp.)</i>

“The war on drugs, in name and in spirit, started during the 1968 presidential campaign, when the country discovered how ‘drugs’ could stand in for a host of troubles too awkward to discuss plainly. . . . Americans spend more on the drug war than on private health insurance . . . more federal dollars than the Commerce, Interior and State departments put together. . . . The war on drugs concentrates unprecedented police power inside the beltway . . . clogs the courts to the point of breakdown . . . criminalizes a generation of African American men. . . . Moreover, the war on drugs frequently makes drug problems worse. . . . Waves of enforcement have consistently inspired people to import, sell and use ever-stronger drugs in ever more dangerous ways. . . . Costly, destructive, and failing in its stated mission, the war on drugs is government lunacy. . . . Yet, we soldier on. . . . Among the things destroyed by the drug war is our ability to debate our way toward a reasonable approach.”

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This is a scary book. Yes, there is a Flat Earth Society. And it is America. We demand action on the “issues” of the day--values, law and order, trust in government, the unraveling of our social fabric, taxes and spending, street gangs, the security of our borders, race relations and the character of leadership. So how can it be there is so little political meditation about a 28-year fizzle-and-flop that embodies them all? I imagine the authorities now tapping into Baum’s phones and following his movements. How dare this lonely free-lance writer challenge the battlefield cant of those who have proven they cannot win the war. Yes, there really is a million man march. Straight to prison. But do we sleep sounder tonight as a consequence?