Candidates for office now routinely admit use of illegal substances, albeit very limited use and long ago. Despite signs of a shift in the public's attitude, there has been no hint of a change in a drug policy based on prohibition and punishment. PNS commentator Craig Reinarman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of "Crack In America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice."

Whoever ultimately wins the presidency, Gore and Bush share one significant characteristic with many who run for high office these days: They are willing to admit, or refuse to deny, using illicit substances, in other words engaging in criminal activity for which thousands of their fellow citizens are arrested and imprisoned each year.

Some argue that the sheer hypocrisy of putting less privileged people in jail for behaviors they themselves indulged in will shame elected officials toward drug policy reform. I'm not sure history supports this view, for politicians seem able to abide hypocrisy without obvious discomfort.

Others claim the drug war's blatantly racist results will make it easy for the next president to take a more humane and fair approach to drug problems. But lots of policies are unjust and yet persist.

Most experts say the drug war has been a costly failure, so it is time to try the public health approaches used in other modern democracies. The government's own surveys confirm that drug use goes up and down, but that real drug abuse continues unabated. After 80 years of punitive prohibition, no one who looks at the evidence can call the drug war a success. Those who spend time in prison are not more likely to live a drug-free, law-abiding life. True enough, but failure alone is rarely enough to force officials to consider alternatives.

In the early 1960s, comedian Lenny Bruce quipped that marijuana would soon be decriminalized because most of the law students who smoked it would soon be in charge of making the laws. It did seem that the new generation of leaders would either understand or be able to move beyond the sort of thinking, based in the failed attempt at alcohol Prohibition, behind our national drug policy.

Baby boomers now taking office know that most drug users harm no one, and that those who do get into trouble need help that is often unavailable. But this has not moved them to push for more humane and effective drug policies.

Perhaps Bush and Gore are so guilt-ridden about their own drug use that they feel they must be holier than earlier antidrug crusaders. Perhaps, too, they have invoked drugs so often as the villain in their electoral drama that they can't now change the script.

In his first year, Clinton suggested shifting some drug war funding away from policing and prisons toward treatment, education, and social services. But Republican right-wingers instantly attacked him as "soft on drugs," so he embraced the drug war with a vengeance.

For each of the next seven years, more Americans were arrested and imprisoned on drug charges than in any year under Reagan or Bush. Meanwhile, drug use among American youth increased in most of those years.

The good news is that the public is ahead of the politicians on these issues. In the last four years, voters in six states and the District of Columbia have passed propositions allowing the medical use of marijuana.

Lost in last week's presidential furor was the fact that California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, which diverts those arrested for use of illicit drugs into probation and treatment rather than jail. Colorado and Nevada voters passed medical marijuana measures. Oregon and Utah voters passed initiatives that stop government from seizing property from suspected drug offenders without due process.

Politicians and their comrades in the drug control complex fought against all such reforms, but it is clear that every time voters have the chance, they just say no to the drug war. Indeed, to judge from the margins of victory, drug policy reforms are far more popular than either presidential candidate.

Will Gore/Bush follow the public's lead? Only time will tell, but the new president might take a lesson from the Cold War. For 30 years after World War II, liberals who wanted to build better relations with Russia and China were called "soft on communism" by conservatives. It took Richard Nixon, a conservative who built his career railing against communism, to begin detente with the Soviets and create an opening to China.