ANTI-DRUG ADS ARE DELIBERATELY MISLEADING

The drug-terror advertisements revisited in Steve Krakauer's Thursday
column, "White House finally learns drug lesson," premiered amid beer
commercials during the Super Bowl. International terrorists have apparently
caught on to something gangster Al Capone learned in the 1920s during
alcohol prohibition.

There are enormous profits to be made on the black market. With drug war
budgets at risk during a time of shifting national priorities, drug
warriors have cynically used drug prohibition's collateral damage to
justify more of the same.

The illicit drug of choice in America is domestically grown marijuana, not
Colombian cocaine or Afghani heroin. The U.S. drug czar's misleading
drug-terror propaganda may lead Americans to mistakenly conclude marijuana
smokers are somehow responsible for the tragic events of 9/11. That's
likely no accident.

The drug war is in large part a war on marijuana, by far the most popular
illicit drug. Taxing and regulating marijuana would render the drug war
obsolete. As long as marijuana remains illegal and distributed by organized
crime, consumers will continue to come into contact with hard drugs like
cocaine and heroin.

For obvious reasons, government bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the
neverending drug war prefer to blame the plant itself for the alleged
"gateway" to hard drugs. Students interested in ending the
intergenerational drug war otherwise known as the war on some drugs should
contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy at www.ssdp.org.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.

Program Officer

Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, D.C.