PROPAGANDA, COVERT AND OVERT

Much noise has been made -- and rightly so -- about the Bush
administration's habit of secretly paying pundits and columnists to tout
the White House line in the guise of independent journalism or
commentary. But as we sound the alarm over covert propaganda, shouldn't we
also be concerned about the overt kind?

The federal government spends enough scarce tax dollars on overt propaganda
to make the $241,000 paid to Armstrong Williams look like chickenfeed, and
that ought to be cause for real outrage. After all, in a democracy, the
people are supposed to tell the government what to think, not vice versa.
Only in dictatorships do governments tell their people what opinions are
acceptable.

On just one issue -- our policy toward marijuana and illegal drugs - - the
federal government has spent over a billion dollars in recent years telling
Americans what to think. Every time a proposal to allow seriously ill
patients to use marijuana for medical purposes under their doctors'
supervision comes before voters or legislators, officials from the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy stream into town, repeating
dire and often misleading warnings. That those warnings often have little
effect (Montana voters ignored the White House and gave 62 percent approval
to a medical marijuana proposal last November) does not make the practice
any less inappropriate.

Perhaps even more pernicious are those ONDCP anti-drug ads on television,
radio and in print. Though officially aimed at curbing teen drug abuse,
independent evaluations of the campaign have consistently failed to find
any such effect. Business Week got it right last October when it reported,
"The ads' main focus is anti-marijuana messages aimed at state ballot
initiatives for drug-policy reform."

Here the White House is having it both ways: Overt propaganda aimed at kids
that also serves as covert political propaganda targeting adults. Worse,
the ads are misleading and very likely counterproductive.

In recent years ONDCP's commercials have focused overwhelmingly, almost
obsessively, on marijuana. But marijuana is well documented to be far less
toxic or addictive than alcohol and tobacco, much less cocaine, heroin or
methamphetamine. A scientific review by Oxford University researcher
Leslie Iversen in the February issue of Current Opinion in Pharmacology
concludes, "Overall, by comparison with other drugs used mainly for
'recreational' purposes, cannabis [marijuana] could be rated a relatively
safe drug."

But you would never know that from those government ads, which suggest that
if you smoke a joint you will shoot your friends, run down little girls on
bicycles and end up a homeless derelict. Far more dangerous substances are
rarely mentioned in this ad blitz, whose White House origins are typically
disclosed in a minimal, easy-to-miss fashion.

There are clear signs that this distorted emphasis, driven by politics
instead of science, is hurting our kids. According to the latest,
federally-funded Monitoring the Future survey of U.S. teenagers, adolescent
use of marijuana declined slightly last year while use of potentially
lethal inhalants and cocaine went up. And teens rated occasional use of
marijuana as being more dangerous than trying crack cocaine, drinking
nearly every day or taking LSD regularly.

Amazingly, White House Drug Czar John Walters called the survey's results
"good news for American parents and teens." One can only wonder what he
thinks bad news would look like. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is preparing to
introduce legislation requiring all government-purchased ads to state that
they were bought at taxpayer expense. Such truth-in-labeling is an
essential, if minimal, step in the right direction.

An even better idea is for our government to get out of the propaganda
business entirely.