PROPAGANDA DRUG COMMERCIALS INSULT VIEWERS' INTELLIGENCE

A 40-something woman stares at a pregnancy test on a table. A man we assume
to be her husband paces back and forth with a look of consternation on his
face.

An advertisement for a pregnancy testing kit during the Super Bowl? Sex
sells, but during the world's biggest testosterone-laced event next to the
Running of the Bulls, sex is buxom women wrestling in a fountain over some
water-downed imbibe.

This couple isn't about to have a child. No, they are about to become the
"youngest grandparents on the block." Their teenage daughter is pregnant
because she puffed before she huffed. The voice-over warns us, "marijuana
can impair your judgment."

The 30-second spot, sponsored jointly by the White House's Office of
National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America,
cost just under $2 million. On the Super Bowl commercial laugh-o-meter, it
was money well spent.

But for only an extra $200, drug czar John Walters could have learned in an
introductory statistics class at his local community college that
correlation doesn't mean causation. Simply put, it was just another
ridiculous salvo in the irrational and failing War on Drugs (a US Department
of Health and Human Services study found that 88.5 percent of high school
seniors said that obtaining marijuana is "fairly easy" or "very easy").

Fear is a great motivational tool. For centuries, churches and religions
used it to keep their flocks from straying. Coveting thy neighbor's wife?
Going to hell.

Now a democratic government resorts to instilling fear in teenagers and
their baby boomer parents, who indubitably inhaled during their formative
years. Smoking marijuana? You're bound to get pregnant, shoot your buddy
with a .38, or run over a cycling pre-teen outside a drive-thru restaurant.

Despite over 15 years of such federally-endorsed anti-drug ads, including
last year's outlandish campaign claiming that marijuana smokers help support
terrorism, people aren't buying it.

According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan released in
December by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana use by 10th
graders dropped only 2.4 percent from 32.7 percent to 30.3 percent during
the last year. Cocaine and heroin use by 10th graders remained stable at 4
percent and 1 percent, respectively. Crack usage skyrocketed 30 percent from
1.8 percent to 2.3 percent.

Weed clearly remains American teenagers' drug of choice. Yet by focusing
anti-drug advertisements primarily on marijuana, the government is
overlooking the constant, if not rising, use of significantly more dangerous
and addictive drugs by adolescents.

Blinded by widely contested evidence that marijuana is a "gateway" to drugs
like cocaine and heroin, the government is essentially putting all of its
eggs in one basket with its current fear-based ad campaign.

It may be unprincipled for the federal government to spend $180 million of
taxpayers' money each year to tell you how to live your life - especially on
such an incredulous campaign - but it is a telling sign that public support
for government prohibition of an innocuous substance is waning.

If rational discussion of national drug policy is trumpeted by fear-inducing
images and sound bytes with little real impact, then it is only a matter of
time before rational minds put an end to the ineffective War on Drugs. But
if past government performance is any indication, then other scandalous
practices, like the drinking of alcohol and the copulation between the
sexes, will be prohibited first.