His job is to wage a national war on drug crime. If appearances are anything to judge by, Jiří Komorous clearly means business.

Tall and powerfully built, Komorous wears a blue sweatshirt inscribed, in Latin, with the motto of the gladiators of ancient Rome: We who are about to die salute you.

On the walls of his office in Prague 6 hang a World War II Russian tommy gun, two rifles, half a dozen pistols, a club and a broadsword.

But if the trappings of warfare that dominate his workspace suggest a man engaged in battle, Komorous, 44, doesn't see himself as a gladiator.

"Sometimes I feel more like Don Quixote," he says, referring to the hero of Cervantes' novel who pursues an idealistic but deluded quest.

For the past decade Komorous has headed the National Antidrug Squad, a special police unit that fights organized drug crime and often operates in the shadows.

While Komorous believes passionately in his work, which he says is his calling as much as his job, the task is hugely difficult. The reasons: social attitudes that are more liberal here than in neighboring countries and citizens' seemingly unquenchable demand for drugs.

Czechs are the second most frequent users of ecstasy in Europe, with 2.5 percent of people from 15 to 64 having tried it, according to a United Nations report released earlier this year.

Although the number of heroin users is no longer rising, marijuana consumption is a "catastrophe," according to Komorous: "We are almost the No. 1 consumer in Europe."

One-fifth of young Czechs age 15 to 34 regularly smoke marijuana, while 6 percent of young people take ecstasy, according to the National Antidrug Squad's annual report for 2004.

Komorous lashes out at attempts to liberalize drug laws, efforts that he says are partly the work of journalists, partly of politicians. He even suggests that some in the medical profession are in favor of softer laws because they stand to profit.

"With politicians it's usually a combination of populism and insufficient knowledge of the issue," he says. "And in the medical field it's people who offer addicts treatment and run this as a business."

Komorous, who according to media rumors was at one time in the running for both the post of interior minister and head of the national police squad, argues that the pro-marijuana attitude of the media makes his life more difficult.

"The young generation of journalists who consume marijuana is obviously not going to write something against marijuana."

Meanwhile, the explosion of drug use in Czech society after the fall of communism "is not only a problem involving criminal organizations. It's the problem of today's consumer society, its emptiness and the attempts to live for the day and for instant success."

While experts say the number of people here regularly using hard drugs has remained steady over the past three years, with estimates ranging from 30,000 to 35,000, police made more seizures of the main three drugs last year than the year before.

In 2004, the National Antidrug Squad reports, police confiscated over 160 kilograms (353 pounds) of cannabis, more than 108,000 pills of ecstasy and almost 36 kilograms of heroin.

Antinarcotics police caught 2,172 offenders, down from the 2003 figure of 2,402, but up from the previous year's, 2,140.

Whatever results his department achieves, Komorous says, one police division cannot win the war on drugs on its own.

He argues that what's needed is a return to traditional values such as patriotism, and a belief in the family and in God.

"It's a very personal question, but yes, I do believe in God," he adds.

Belief matters, says Komorous. "Poland, in contrast to the Czech Republic, is a religious country. And this definitely influences a country's demand for drugs. Slovakia has a drug law with zero tolerance. In Hungary it's a combination. The Czech Republic is the one that is the most 'free' in the region."

Has he never been tempted to try drugs himself? Komorous looks his interviewer straight in the eye and shakes his head.

"I started work as a detective in an antidrug division. A lot of young people died in my arms."

Komorous, born in Plzeň, west Bohemia, joined the police in 1984 after graduating in law from Charles University, and took over as head of the National Antidrug Squad in 1995, an appointment that has brought him personal hazards.

He says he has received death threats by SMS, and that security officials warned him that the boss of a Kosovo-Albanian gang intended to kill him.

Komorous has also faced uncomfortable questions about his past.

In 1998, a parliamentary deputy accused him of being an StB (secret police) agent under the communist regime.

Komorous acknowledges that from 1988 to 1990 he attended an officers' language course run by the intelligence services.

But did he ever actually work for the StB? He shakes his head again. "I couldn't be here if I did."