Let’s be honest with ourselves. Is the war against drugs really a war that we can win?

Since Christmas, the newspapers have been filled with all sorts of stories about or related to the U.S. military’s holiday excursion to Panama and the soon-after surrender of alleged drug lord, murderer, and all around nasty boy Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.

Though 23 American lives were snuffed out in the process of delivering Noriega to justice (another issue that deserves to be talked about in its own right), the entire operation, in most circles, has been considered a successful one.

This is mainly because the ending of Noriega’s reign will hopefully put a big dent in the drug market down in Central America.

Hurray! Hurray! Three cheers for George Bush! We have won a battle in the drug war. We are winning. But wait minute. We just lost one back home.

Last week, Sandra Bearden, 30, a mother from Lansing, Mich., was convicted of cocaine possession after a two-day trial in which her pre-teen son and daughter testified for the prosecution.

Maybe Bearden did get caught and put away, but consider this: We say we are fighting the war against drugs for the children. How far have we come if we have people in this country who are using drugs in the prescence of the children who we are supposedly trying to save?