Posted on 12/11/2002 10:18:47 PM PST by gcruse
LOS ANGELES -- Terrible things: The government defends its anti-drug ads.
by Jacob Sullum
"If you don't want something to be true," says the headline over a full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times, "does that make it propaganda?"
No. Here is what makes it propaganda: It aims not to educate people but to shape their behavior by presenting a distorted, one-sided interpretation of reality that ignores important information as well as contrary perspectives. That's an accurate description of the federal government's anti-drug ads, which is why the Office of National Drug Control Policy feels the need to defend them in nationwide newspaper ads.
In particular, the ad defends the proposition that drug users are accessories to "intimidation, bribery, torture and murder." Drug money, you see, "funds terrible things," and "drug money comes from drug buyers. So if people stopped buying drugs, there wouldn't be a drug market. No drug market, no drug dealers. No drug dealers, no drug violence, corruption and misery."
The first problem with this syllogism is its unstated moral premise: If some of the people who profit from the sale of a product do "terrible things," anyone who consumes the product is responsible for those crimes. By this logic, everyone who drives a car is responsible for terrorism because of the links between oil and radical Islam.
"When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden," comic Bill Maher suggests in the title of his new book. Meanwhile, a little less tongue in cheek, columnist Arianna Huffington has suggested an ad campaign highlighting the connection between oil consumption and terrorism. A script by ad writer Scott Burns has SUV drivers confessing, "I gassed 40,000 Kurds," "I helped hijack an airplane," and "I helped blow up a nightclub." Huffington says she is raising money to produce the ads. Oddly, the Bush administration has not volunteered to chip in.
The other problem with blaming drug buyers for violence is that the nexus between drugs and "intimidation, bribery, torture and murder" exists because the government created it. No prohibition, no black market. No black market, no black-market violence and corruption.
In this light, drug czar John Walters and other supporters of the status quo bear more responsibility for "terrible things" than the average pot smoker or coke sniffer. No wonder they're so defensive.
(Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.)
Yes, he should have added something like: Taking drugs is generally a bad idea---but goverment coercion has failed, as it failed during Prohibition. The best hope for minimizing drug use, and the only one consistent with individual rights, is a privately-funded educational campaign.
Unfortunately, we do have to keep paying for it.
I hope the ads get made -- not for their direct explicit message (which is silly) but for their effect at puncturing a particularly egregious bit of government flatulence.
Is this really so hard to grasp??
Why would anyone expect a government agent to tell the truth?
Think, people. ;^)
No. Here is what makes it propaganda: It aims not to educate people but to shape their behavior by presenting a distorted, one-sided interpretation of reality that ignores important information as well as contrary perspectives. That's an accurate description of the federal government's anti-drug ads, which is why the Office of National Drug Control Policy feels the need to defend them in nationwide newspaper ads.It's also a matter of job preservation. No bureaucracy should be permitted to use tax money to promote/defend the role of their agency. This applies to BATF and EPA as well as DEA and ONDCP.
-Eric
You and I both want to believe that George W. is fighting the good fight against the Islamists and the other "evil-doers" around the world, who use the military tactic of killing innocent civilians to achieve their nebulous and wholly evil goals.
With that said, why is it becoming harder and harder to believe what they say about, for example, Iraq? One of the big reasons is that you, I and many other Americans know that the same federal government that we expect to tell us the truth about Saddam Hussein is LYING about drugs. We know that marijuana is not the same as heroin, and it doesn't lead to heroin use. We know that if you smoke a joint, you're not funneling money to bin Laden. Our government, for the ostensible reason of "protecting the children" and the real reason of God only knows what, continues to tell those LIES with these ridiculous ads. So an easy conclusion to draw is: "If they're lying about pot, what else are they lying about?"
If we're to get serious about destroying our enemies, our government had better clean up its act at home, and stop telling these lies. Otherwise, our Free Republic and our unparalleled way of life is doomed.
Now that's an ad I would like to see.
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