The drug war continues previous attacks on the underclass and was implemented as a followup to Bush's 1988 campaign focus on Willie Horton. Part of the drug war is being fought abroad, providing an opportunity to combat leftist insurgencies in the Third World under acceptable cover. A major component of the drug war is public relations, which involves three financial shell games: a small down payment, quiet transfers from other social programs, and reverse revenue sharing through cutbacks in existing grants to States. The Bush drug war was over in 1990, and the administration shifted its attention to other matters even though serious drug abuse and drug-related crime had not declined. In fact, the decline in middle-class drug abuse began before Bush took office, and the media's focus on cocaine use as an inner-city problem overlooks the reality that a majority of drug users are white. Nevertheless, Bush and his successors will undoubtedly return to the drug wars as the cycle of social tragedy and policy failures produces another effort to show social concern. Notes and 23 references