HARROWING WEED TURMOIL EXPOSED

SO HERE WE have a full-page newspaper advertisement. Photograph of a
middle-aged man, rimless glasses, heavy coat, staring mournfully into the
camera. Behind him, a old brick building looms.

Headline: "How a Marijuana Habit Forced Bob Payne Onto the Street."

Now, you are an experienced consumer of media. What story would you expect
to read under the headline? Here was my guess: Poor Bob smoked too much pot
for too long, lost his job, went bankrupt, became a homeless person now
struggling to rebuild his life. Yes? Something like that?

Well, no. Bob Payne has never smoked marijuana. His daughter Lindsay did,
in the 10th grade. She smoked a lot. She began skipping school. She lost
interest in sports. Her "spark was gone."

(I confess that this same thing happened to me when I was in the ninth
grade. I was using no drugs except suggestive poetry and natural hormones.
I was rude and indolent. Unfortunately, since I had no bad habits to break,
I was like a sinking ship with no cargo to throw overboard. Then I
discovered I could cash in on my alienation by entering the exciting field
of journalism. But enough about me.)

Lindsay's habit was discovered, and she started going to a self-help group.
But one day, her father noticed that she seemed "too eager" to go to the
group. He drove by the building where it was held. (This is the "onto the
street" part -- he was forced to drive on the streets of his own town.) He
discovered that her car was not there.

A few minutes later, he discovered her car parked in front of a friend's
house. Oh, he read her the riot act. She was grounded for 30 days, and she
was enrolled in two self-help groups. And sure enough, she cleaned up her
act and is now trying out for the softball team.

AND THAT'S IT. This is the harrowing tale. I have heard worse stuff in line
at the supermarket. Heck, I did worse stuff than that, entirely drug free,
and I was a pretty good adolescent. What is the point here?

Perhaps to run the sensationalistic headline. White man threatened with
poverty! Read now!

Did I say that the ad is sponsored by the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America? This "partnership" is funded by liquor, tobacco and pharmaceutical
companies (as well as our tax dollars), and is designed to get children off
the drugs sold by street entrepreneurs and back on good old American drinks
and ciggies and pills pushed by large corporations.

You won't be seeing tales of people abusing their wives after a drinking
bout. You won't be seeing examinations of akathisia, a condition caused by
the overuse of SSRIs like Prozac. You won't be seeing folks dying of lung
cancer, lured to their death by addictive nicotine.

Instead: An adolescent's grades fall off. She gets clean, and she tries out
for softball. Hello?

YOU MIGHT SAY: So what? Another dopey campaign. This is your brain on
advertising.

Here's the problem: We are continuing to talk ourselves into something. We
are pretending the War on Some Drugs is a useful and necessary civic campaign.

Indeed, it is so important that we are slowly slipping into a ground war in
South America to support this dreadful idea. We are propping up a corrupt
and murderous dictatorship. We are making the same mistakes we have made
before, all based on bad data and institutionalized hypocrisy.

These ads represent the establishment talking to itself. The cognitive
disconnect grows ever larger -- look at the real content of the
advertisement versus the scare headline. What's the bottom line? The War on
Some Drugs is for the children. We will do anything for the children. Even
distasteful campaigns in far-off countries are justified if they are for
the children.

Not that either presidential candidate has the guts to discuss the issue.
Nope. It wouldn't be fair to the children.