I’m a big fan of famed singer, songwriter, and actress Marianne Faithfull, who for almost the entirety of her adult life suffered all the milestones of a major drug addiction.

From her notorious stints in rehab over the years, where she was reported to be “untreatable,” searching for drugs with her then lover, Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, at Keith Richard’s house in the 1970s, and her 2-year experience as a homeless junkie, Faithfull has lived a hard life of addiction and has paid dearly for it.

Though this was nearly 20 years ago and Faithfull has since cleaned up her act, America’s war on drugs has tried to wreak havoc over the drug industry.

Now, in 2007, President Bush, in front of an audience of drug experts and narcotics officers, is taking the credit for this decade’s decline in drug use among young people in America.

According to Monitoring the Future, which did a study on teens' drug use, trends in adolescents toking up, snorting, shooting and ingesting drugs has taken a significant dip in numbers. Bush and his drug czar John Walters are using these new statistics to make themselves look like winners instead or morons.

But is President Bush accurate in his claim of victory in the war against drugs, or is he just picking out the good stuff from between powdery white lines, where drug use is decreasing in some age groups and increasing in others?

According to Monitoring the Future’s study, the percentage of eighth-graders who had used any illegal drug at least once in the past year took a significant drop from 24 percent to 13 percent between 1997 and 2007, showing a fall in teen use of everything from marijuana to methamphetamines.

For that, we can say kudos, Mr. President.

But the same study showed that ecstasy use among teens was on the rise, but that only accounts for their focus group of choice—eigth graders.

Though our dear president is giving himself and his administration a firm pat on the back, he should have read the whole report before claiming that he and his boys were saving young people from snorting themselves to death.

And what about other young age groups, like say college students who have left mom and dad’s house to experience everything they weren’t allowed to? Or how about kids who are only slightly older than just the 8th graders that were mentioned, like high school students?

Our own campus of young adults is suffering from an increase in drug use, free from the monitoring care of our parents and their moral values.

The National Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, which was conducted at SF State by the organization, Creating Empowerment Through Alcohol and Substance Abuse Education (CEASE), found that a whopping 73 percent of students surveyed on campus reported that they had a drink within the last 30 days this year, and that marijuana use rose 2 percent.

Sure, lots of students pass the dutchie around and of course drink, but students are also using “harder” drugs and the statistics are showing that too.

SF State students are now dabbling more in cocaine and heroin, where students now are snorting and shooting up 3.4 percent this year, compared to 2002’s lowly 1.8 percent.

So even though Bush feels that his administration is responsible for his “winning” battle against junkies and dealers, he has been selective about what the real truth is, that drug use is still running rampant in America among suburban and urban youth alike among a variety of age groups.

Instead of praising himself and his lackeys for doing good against the pushers and drug lords that probably got them high when they were youngsters, the president should be rallying to fund more, better drug treatment facilities and better education against current and new drugs to help a huge problem.