America’s perpetual "war on drugs," which should more accurately be called a "war on selected drug users," has had a few successes to which its beleaguered sponsors can point, even if illegal substances re-main as available as ever.

First off, although we haven’t put even a small dent in the highly profitable international drug trade over the past few decades, our minions have killed a lot of people, both at home and abroad, and not one of them will use drugs again.

Beyond that, the untold billions in tax dollars that cynics see as totally wasted, or worse yet going to line the pockets of the dark forces our drug soldiers are supposed to be fighting, have in fact greatly contributed to our current economic good times in several ways.

For major dealers, who seem mysteriously immune to arrest and prosecution, the war keeps street prices high and allows them to live a life of untaxed luxury, which in turn benefits sellers of trophy homes, yachts, limos and specialty foods. (Why, these entrepreneurs contribute so much to our prosperity that it would be almost unpatriotic to interfere with their business.)

Also, the war — which, like Vietnam, no one is really trying to end — has created lots of terrific employment opportunities for people who might well be among the jobless otherwise.

Undercover informants, who enlist in this "army" so they can continue to use their drugs of choice with impunity while being paid and protected by the police, obviously have few other job skills to market. (I’m good at lying, snorting speed and betraying people who consider me a friend, an honest résumé might read.)

And without the legions of narcotic detectives who do nothing but investigate minor drug cases and bust hapless street-level dealers, police forces themselves would be considerably smaller, thereby throwing even more people out of work.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the myriad ways the drug war helps keep our economy booming.

The prison industry —both public and private —is one of the fastest-growing in the country, with well over a million people behind bars and more on the way. This means a plethora of jobs in a variety of fields, including steel workers (carbon-steel bars and window gratings), construction workers and other tradesmen, assemblers of electronic monitors and locks and manufacturers of jumpsuits, metal trays, blunt tableware, thin mattresses — and that’s just to get the new high-tech cages up and running.

It’s not counting the three shifts of prison guards, the administrators, cooks, bus drivers, medical workers and counselors that are hired once a new "correctional facility" is ready to open.

But there’s much more! Just think of all the judges (who should know better), prosecutors, defense lawyers, probation officers, employees of drug-testing labs and all the other parasites who feed off the bodies of drug-war casualties.

And then there’s the "ripple effect" —secondary jobs created at convenience stores, fast-food joints and in the service industries that depend on those in better-paying gigs letting a little trickle down to them.

All in all, I suspect the war is responsible for at least a million jobs directly, and maybe that many more indirectly.

Of course, there are the sticky questions of ethics and the occasional murder —Can you say Ismael Mena, father of nine recently shot to death by a Denver SWAT team that smashed its way into the wrong house? — to be dealt with, but slick politicians have no trouble mouthing shopworn, discredited platitudes as election-year "answers."

And never mind that many of these same politicians get stinking drunk when the mood strikes them, with far more impunity than your average citizen, and have influential friends who use their weight to keep them in office, no matter how much of a lush or prescription-drug abuser they might be. (As I mentioned, our insane, destructive, Puritanical campaign should more properly be termed a war against selected drug users, most of whom are far less dangerous than your average nasty drunk.)

These are the same political hacks who occasionally confess to "experimenting" with forbidden substances while in college (some of this research went on for years), and although they paid no price for their "crimes," the raging hypocrites now have no problem sending others to jail for similar conduct.

Obviously, those who maintain the war on drugs is not being won just refuse to see the truth: It has had plenty of winners.