Slick Willie pardoned his brother.

And no one cares. No one even notices.

Do you know why no one cares? Because he was in the slammer for cocaine.

Forgetting for a moment the obvious objection - the presidential pardon was not created to excuse drug-busted family members and jailed scandal partners - it also begs the question of the validity of the War on Drugs in the public eye.

What would have happened if Clinton’s brother were a rapist? There\'s be riots in the streets, but all the guy did was shove a bunch of synthetic garbage up his nose. So no one cares.

Everyone’s used to it. This sort of self-destructive behavior is not uncommon in American society. Ask our two most popular recent presidential candidates. They’ve both learned the Slick Willie lesson well and have declined to answer or have successfully evaded questions about past drug experiences.

But no one in their right mind would ever suggest Al never smoked pot or George never snorted coke. And if any of their family or old friends hinted at it, they would brazenly use some impressive colloquial.

“Youthful indiscretions” is a popular one. Use whatever pretty name you want. Courts call them felonies - often.

More than 60 percent of all federal prisoners are locked in cages for drugs, and the state prisons usually hover at around 25 percent. And we’re not talking about some minuscule portion of untouchable American society, either. The American Industrial Prison Complex, the justice of the land of the free, is responsible for one-quarter of all the world’s prisoners.

We can’t lock people up fast enough. There are more nonviolent prisoners than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska, and between 1984 and 1996, California built 21 new prisons - and only one new university.

So our prison industry is booming. That sure is good.

But a little confusing: The Department of Justice reports a steady 17.6 percent decline in violent crime from 1994-98. And yet, our prison population increased 21.5 percent during the same period. What seems to be going on here?

While I let you chew on that question, I might mention that the promulgation of the War on Drugs costs us $110 billion a year, the government says. This is your money. It’s not some tiny insignificant fraction of a fraction of one of your hard-earned cents. It’s enormous. It’s so much, in fact, we could use it to - put this in your pipe and smoke it - hire 2,955,956 new high school teachers. Think that might have a positive social impact?

Or we could hire half that many teachers and use the rest to build top-quality treatment clinics for drug addicts who have a desire to kick their addiction.

Because nothing else works, heroin and crack addicts don’t care about mandatory minimum prison sentences or archaic punitive strategies designed to scare them into docile obedience. Addictions don’t shut off when threatened with incarceration. It simply doesn’t work that way.

And yet, the government insists on continuing the pretense that it is locking us in cages to save us from ourselves. I can’t help but furrow my brow every time I hear these anti-drug propaganda snippets coming from televisions, radios, magazines, teachers, urinals and black-and-white billboards from God. I mean, alcohol’s legal. Tobacco’s legal. These two kill more Americans than all other drugs combined (times 30!). So you’ll excuse me if I’m a little skeptical about the government’s desire to keep me safe and healthy.

Willie is fine with overseeing some of the largest increases in domestic anti-drug law enforcement during his tenure as president, but he obviously doesn’t feel his brother needs to be saved from himself.

The power to lock people away in a cage as though they were dangerous animals is an awesome one. And we, the complacent American populace, have allowed one of the greatest hypocrisies of the Clinton administration to transgress without batting an eye. Hundreds of thousands of peaceful citizens are waiting for us to regain our senses as Roger Clinton walks - and only because he was related to the president.

I’m not mad at him for the hypocrisy of dragging his personal life into the presidency. I just see a way he could have accomplished his goal and made a real difference at the same time. He shouldn’t have stopped with his brother.

When Slick Willie left office, he should have set all the drug prisoners free.

Andrew Banyai, a political science and pre-law junior, can be reached at banyaian@msu.edu.