Rarely has an idea moved so quickly from the political loonylands to received truth.

Two months ago, the bald fact that the costly 20-year-old War on Drugs was not only a complete failure at its stated aims, but a spectacular assault on the freedoms of all Americans, was literally unmentionable. A few nuts kept hammering away at the obvious--drug use is up, and criminalization makes things worse, not better--but their opinions were stonewalled in the media and invisible to lawmakers. Instead, each new failure was met by ramping up the War yet another notch or three.

And then, a popular movie came out that questioned some--only a few, really-- of the absurdities of the "War." And suddenly, it was as if somebody's pollster had finally noticed. Noticed that for years, states like California and Arizona and, yes, Washington have passed medical marijuana initiatives by overwhelming margins. (In response, politicians and law enforcement officials declared war on the voters, too.) Noticed that last fall California passed another initiative, Prop. 36, that was a sweeping repudiation of the War, ending prison time for first and second offenses. (In response, politicians and law enforcement officials declared war on those voters, too.) Noticed that tens of millions of Americans don't like having their freedoms stripped away, their local police departments transformed into occupying armies, their doors kicked in by mistake at 4 AM, their prisons stuffed to overflow (after ten years of declining crime levels) with people who harmed nobody.

In Washington state, somebody noticed that John Carlson, prominent tough-on- crime demagouge--a public figure closely linked to the War on Drugs--soft- pedalled all that in his run for governor, and still got fewer votes than Ellen Craswell.

And now, it's as though someone flipped a switch, and the race to renounce the War on Drugs--while still keeping it largely in place--is on. High-level generals like long-time King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng made sure they were on camera last week as they paraded to Olympia to admit that their War isn't working.

In more honorable societies, such confessions would have been followed by people like Maleng falling on their swords--literally, and on camera, too. Instead, here in America, formerly (before the War) the land of the free, but still the land of the unaccountable prosecutors, Maleng was calling for reform. His favored bills (SB 5419 and HB 2003), lauded by a vast array of top Warriors, cut future prison sentences and use the savings to expand drug abuse treatment programs. The bills would never have gotten a hearing a few months ago; now they're considered certain to pass.

These bills are, of course, welcome. They will clearly result in fewer lives destroyed by the Prosecutorial State. But let's look at what such bills won't do:

* Reduce bloated law enforcement budgets or make departments return all those fancy hi-tech toys;

* Restore provisions of the Bill of Rights--especially the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments--steadily stripped away by Congress, Olympia, the courts, and by practices of police, workplaces, and schools;

* Grant amnesty to any of the nearly one million inmates in America imprisoned for drug or drug-caused offenses, some of whom, thanks to mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws, are caged for most or all of the rest of their lives for ludicrously inconsequential offenses;

* Address problems caused by criminalization of highly popular substances, or the absurdity of banning drugs (like marijuana) less harmful than alcohol or tobacco;

* Address the racial disparities in drug law enforcement;

* Alleviate the conviction held by many African-Americans and others that the War on Drugs has been not a failure, but a resounding success--in that its true purpose was to criminalize and disenfrancise a generation of poor and non-white youth;

* Stem the War-justified cascade of defoliants, weapons, and money flowing to the thugs slaughtering peasantry in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and southern Mexico, all of which are in turmoil; or

* Hold anyone who has perpetrated this treasonous War accountable for their crimes.

Instead, Maleng et al. are trying to have it both ways. By trumpeting their recognition of the War's most obvious truths, they are hoping to get credit for their far-sightedness and wisdom. At the same time, they're explicitly hoping to stop recognition of the other truths that inevitably follow. It's not going to work.

On the very day after Maleng's testimony, some 75 anti-War citizens-- including lawyers, judges, and people in touch with George Soros, the billionaire who helped fund Prop. 36--gathered to discuss how best to use their momentum. From their meeting, a Prop. 36-style initiative seems inevitable, either for this fall's ballot or next year.

Such publicly initiated laws appall government officials, and not just federal ones (like John Ashcroft, who is still busily expanding his precious War). They dislike these laws not because they're bad public policy, but because they call into question the massive new powers that various tentacles of government have graciously granted each other for the last 20 years.

That power grab is at the heart of the War on Drugs, and it's been a bipartisan affair, supported by liberals and government-off-my-back conservatives alike. It's time to not just end the War on Drugs, but free its victims and dismantle those powers. Now.

Geov Parrish