By Jann S. Wenner and Ethan Nadelmann

President Clinton's proposed drug-control budget will cost America $16 billion. This is the largest federal anti-drug expenditure in our nation's history, up from $1 billion in 1980.

When all is said and done, it is a continuation of failed policies and an exercise in deceit.

As the first president of the post-World War II baby-boomer generation, President Clinton should have some insight into drugs and human behavior - many of his peers his largest contributors and the staff around him have had some experience with illegal drugs. It is obvious that few of them are addicts or criminals, and they shouldn't be thrown in jail or forced to submit to testing.

And it is also obvious that after more then 25 years and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered on interdiction and punishment - in California, more state money is now spent on incarceration than on higher education - the "war on drugs" is wasteful

and socially destructive.

It is disappointing that Clinton has chosen to take part in this hypocrisy. The real problem is the war itself and the unwillingness, or inability, to look for new options. In fairness, this year's drug strategy put forth by Gen. Barry McCaff softer in tone than those issued by the first drug czar, William Bennett. There's even a nod to education, treatment and compassion.

But beneath the rhetoric, the federal government is still waging war on citizens, 70 million of whom have used illegal drugs. Though voters in both California and Arizona, have taken their disapproval of the nation's drug policies to the voting booths, the Clinton administration continues to pour funds into a campaign that is cowardly and dishonest, and is starting to become comparable to the ugly government excesses of the McCarthy and Vietnam era.

Our challenge as individuals, communities and a nation is not to eradicate drugs - an impossible task that flies in the face of the history of human experience - but to learn how to live with their presence so that they cause the least possible harm and generate the greatest possible benefit. There is no denying that a small percentage of those who use drugs also abuse them, but we can deal more effectively with drug abuse only if we are open and honest in talking about drugs and considering all the options.

How can that be done? For openers, heed the election results in California and Arizona, where voters demonstrated that they are ready and willing to adopt more-pragmatic policies. Voters are fed up with the drug war, and they have begun to show it.

They've lost faith. They want a saner drug policy, not old rhetoric and new prisons.

>> Start with the truth. When it's pointed out that "almost three-quarters of drug users are employed," take that as evidence that most drug users are responsible citizens, students and employees - not as a justification for a drug-testing witch hunt. There is little reason to keep

pretending that there is no difference between responsible and irresponsible use of drugs, legal or illegal. >> Respect the science. Nearly every independent commission assigned to examine the evidence on marijuana and marijuana policy - including a National Academy of Sciences committee - has concluded that marijuana poses fewer dangers to individuals and our society than either alcohol or tobacco and should be decriminalized Similarly, virtually every expert scientific advisory body ever created to study drug abuse agrees that making sterile syringes available to injection-drug users sterns the spread of HIV without increasing drug abuse. The U.S. is essentially alone among advanced industrialized nations in not making access to sterile syringes a central component of its HIV-prevention efforts.

>> Act pragmatically, not ideologically. Drug treatment can work if given half a chance. But drug treatment is a matter of different strokes for different folks. Twelve-step programs and therapeutic communities are what some people need to put drug problems behind them. When it comes to heroin addiction, there is scant disagreement among scientists: Methadone works best. But someone has to take the lead in fight the stigma associated with this form of treatment and making it readily available to those who need it.

>> Use common sense. Everything we know about addiction tells us that the choices are not solely between drug abuse and complete abstinence. When people reduce their drug intake, or restrict their use to particular times and places, or consume drugs in less dangerous ways and forms, all these represent steps in the right direction. It's called harm reduction. A negative drug test is not necessarily the desired end point of successful drug treatment. Far more important are improvements in health, employment and responsible living - even if one's urine is not clean.

>> Finally, remember the bottom line. American citizens have a right to insist that government officials stop tossing their money down the drain on programs that do nothing. It's time to skewer the sacred cows of the drug war interdiction efforts that do nothing to protect homes and communities; D.A.R.E. drug-education programs that cost hundreds of millions of dollars but don't educate or otherwise prevent drug abuse; federal- and state-prison cells for tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders; asset-forfeiture programs that enrich police departments and divert police priorities from focusing on violent and other predatory criminal activity.

By criminalizing a basic human behavior, we have done nothing but allow vast criminal enterprises not only to flourish but to take over the governments of nations like Mexico and Colombia while imprisoning 400,000 people in the U.S. Now, Clinton proposes to escalate the war. The facts are clear: People take drugs no matter what the government says or does. Real leadership requires the courage and honesty to recognize that the war on drugs, like the war in Vietnam, is cruet, wrong and unwinnable.