ANTI-DRUG ADS MAKE UNFAIR COMPARISON

It's been a tough week.

I caught the flu, drank a little too much this weekend and had to make a
trip to the emergency room after accidentally cutting myself. Well, no
matter how bad it was, as I enjoyed the Super Bowl Sunday night with the
rest of America, I faced the harsh reality behind my heinous actions.

As it turns out, I support terrorism.

I kill single mothers and young girls. I beat old men to death. I run over
school girls on bikes, abandon babies under my car and now, I'm pregnant.

Well, at least according to the U.S. government's Office of National Drug
Control Policy, my use of marijuana supports all these things.

During the Super Bowl, several new ads from the government's anti-drug
campaign aired, including a spot called, "Ghost" that shows a man sitting
alone on a subway when a rag-tag group of drug war casualties suddenly
appear across from him.

"You killed us," they say in unison. "They slit my throat," a woman says to
him. "I saw something I wasn't supposed to," says a man standing next to her.

Another depicts a middle-age couple standing over a home pregnancy test
gizmo. A title appears: "This couple is about to become the youngest
grandparents in town," as the camera pans over to their derelict teenage
daughter. "Marijuana impairs judgment," the voice warns.

Killing innocent people? Impregnating slim teenage girls? This is some
serious stuff I've been up to.

If it all sounds unbelievable, just check out this message from another ad
featuring the beloved characters of "Nick" and "Norm" who like to pretend
they're Quentin Tarantino:

Norm: "Drug money funds terror." I mean, why should I believe that?

Nick: Because ... it's a fact?

Norm: A fact?

Nick: F.A.C.T. Fact.

Norm: So, you're saying that I should believe it because ... it's ... true.
That's your argument.

Nick: It is true.

Yeah, any questions?

If that exchange didn't answer all your questions, you're certainly not alone.

A survey, conducted by the private research firm Westat and the University
of Pennsylvania, shows "no evidence the multi-million-dollar campaign is
discouraging drug use." In fact, since anti-drug ads began airing in the
early '80s with "Just Say No" and the infamous "this is your brain on
drugs," omelet spots, no evidence has surfaced linking the hundreds of
millions of dollars of advertising funds with any real results. And that
information isn't coming from the stoners who live across the hall, but the
U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"These ads aren't having an impact on teenagers," Tom Riley, a spokesman
for the office, told USA TODAY this summer. "We've spent millions on these
ads and we are not seeing a return on the investment."

I'm not advocating an all-stoner society, a utopia of teen drug use and
cheap pot. I recognize the efforts of the government to curb both teen and
overall drug use as a noble cause, but come on. The ads claim to present
the "facts," but most teens or young adults who have yet to fry their
brains on drugs find the stretch of the government's arguments a little
hard to swallow.

While drug money does indeed support terrorism to some degree, the
arguments made by the commercials are suggesting: "If you smoked a joint,
you may as well have hijacked the plane yourself," when in fact the
"terrorism" referenced is that of South American rebel groups. The only
drug money connected to al Qaeda is $40 million earned by the Taliban from
heroin and opium production, a drop in the global drug bucket.

Drugs do present serious health dangers which deserve to be promoted so
that people can make educated choices about drug use, but the government's
continued use of half-truths to scare the public is a perpetuation of the
ineffective zero-tolerance mind-set.

And by the way, I'm expecting in mid-September.