SUV'S AND DRUGS NOT TIED TO TERRORISM

Ads Convey Convoluted Messages On Money

Last January, pundit Arianna Huffington and a Hollywood think-tank called
The Detroit Project released a pair of ads linking SUV ownership with
terrorism. The ads appeared for six days in Detroit; Washington, D.C.; New
York; and Los Angeles. One of the ads about a hypothetical SUV owner named
"George" describes the flow of money from an SUV owner's high gas bills at
the pump, to a rich Saudi oil baron, to the hands of al Qaeda via
contributions to terrorist organizations, like the charitable contributions
that ended up in the hands of 9/11 hijackers.

The ads seem a bit unfair.

Surely America's heavy dependence on foreign oil is due in part to the
public's taste for huge, inefficient "light trucks," which accounted for 51
percent of vehicle sales last year. But blaming a specific segment of the
consumer population for our broad foreign entanglements is ridiculous.
After all, the U.S. government has directly trained and funded Taliban
forces, as well as sold weapons to Iraq when it was known that they were
using chemical weapons (defined by the administration as a weapon of mass
destruction) against its own Kurdish population. Furthermore, the U.S.
government to this day supports a military presence in a monarchy called
Saudi Arabia at a cost of $60 billion per year.

But lots of advertisements make ridiculous claims.

If an ad seems hyperbolic or unfair, students of social psychology are
taught to ask, "Compared to what?" It seems fair to compare the ad to its
source material, a series of ads produced by the Office of National Drug
Control Policy and bankrolled by the federal government. These ads link
buying drugs to terrorism, and they make the Huffington spots look like
scripture with this manipulative, unfair claim.

The first ad that linked buying drugs to terrorism was one of two anti-drug
ads that debuted during the 2002 Super Bowl, and was quickly yanked off the
air due to public outcry.

Rubbing shoulders with Budweiser commercials, one of these ads juxtaposed
actual images of terrorists with a picture of a boy smoking a joint.

The two 30-second spots cost $3 million.

Since then, the controversial commercial has been replaced by a more sober
series of four spots titled "Nick and Norm," wherein a pair of middle-aged
white men in suits discuss drugs and terrorism.

The younger, swarthier man employs a variety of wishy-washy, morally
relative arguments trying to justify his hypothetical dope purchases.

In one spot, he ponders if it's okay to support terrorism "a little bit,"
and in another spot insists that the issue is "complicated." His
fair-haired comrade, who looks more than a little like an older version of
Loveline's Dr. Drew, speaks with unbridled confidence that drug money funds
terror. "It's a fact," he insists, "F-A-C-T," putting all arguments soundly
to rest with the persuasive subtlety of a nun telling a 4-year-old about God.

The argument rests on the fact that the Taliban, which harbored al Qaeda,
used heroin production as a means of income.

Another truism taught to social psychology students is that "correlation is
not causation," and a broader sample of heroin-producing countries produces
little proof for a broader causal link between heroin and terrorism.

According to http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov, 60 percent and 24 percent
of heroin seized in the United Students comes from Columbia and Mexico,
respectively. In 2001, Laos and Burma were the chief opium growers, neither
of which has been identified as a terrorist threat by the United States. On
the other hand, many nations like Algeria and Libya, which appear
repeatedly as bases of operation on President George W. Bush's list of
terrorist organizations, are not major drug exporters.

In the year 2000, Afghanistan was the world's chief opium grower.

In July of that year, the Taliban banned poppy production, burning down
heroin labs and jailing users until they agreed to switch crops.

Their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an edict stating that
opium production was contrary to the beliefs of Islam. These are not the
logical actions of a state attempting to raise money for terrorist actions
through drug production. In one year, opium production fell 97 percent,
according to the White House.

"We are not just guessing," stated U.N. Regional Director Bernard Frahi.
"We have seen the proof in the fields." UCSD professor David Mares has
suggested that the loss of money from opium production had a destabilizing
effect on the region, perhaps making terrorism a more attractive option for
young men in this desperately poor country.

The link between drugs and terrorism becomes far more tentative when actual
drug-use patterns in the United States are considered. The Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration reports that 0.1 percent, or
one-thousandth of Americans over the age of 12, used heroin in 2001. Not
much of a target audience for a Super Bowl commercial. More than seven
times as many (957,000) in the same age group had used the opiate
oxycontin, a legal painkiller which many doctors claim can be every bit as
addictive as heroin.

Even assuming that a buyer could find Afghan heroin on the streets after
the 2000 poppy ban, all they would have to do to cut off any possible
funding to the Taliban is to switch to oxycontin, made by Purdue Pharma in
the United States. The ads do not mention that.

Although the current table-talk spots remain vague, the Super Bowl spot
made its focus clear through images.

The drug user in that ad was not shooting up, but rather smoking a joint.

This makes logistic sense, since marijuana is by far the most commonly used
illegal drug in the United States. It is also nearly impossible to link to
terrorism with the vast majority of pot smoked in the United States grown
in Canada, Mexico and domestically. Most home-growers in Tennessee would
chuckle at the idea that any of their profits end up in the hands of
foreigners of any stripe.

The fact is that from bathtub methamphetamine and hydroponic weed to
diverted pharmaceuticals and GHB made from industrial cleaning materials, a
substantial portion of the U.S. drug market has absolutely nothing to do
with any foreign source.

The ads certainly do not mention that.

The attempt to link drugs to terrorism cannot be construed as a public
health message because it makes no attempt to educate; all attempts at
meaningful dialogue by the dark-haired character are dismissed by the
unquestionable repetitions of his companion, sans evidence.

They are propaganda pieces meant to link drug use to a foreign menace that
does "things so awful that we can't even conceive of them yet."

Furthermore, the spots were intended to shore up support for the war on
terror among parents worried about the dangers that drugs and drug-related
crime pose to their children.

With drug reform measures on the ballots in states like Nevada and Arizona
in the 2002 elections, these spots delivered a powerful political message
to voters.

By fallaciously linking a domestic issue like punishment of drug offenders
to a broader international agenda, these ads helped quiet an important
debate about the way our society deals with consensual crimes.

Although many find campaign ads offensive, at least they are paid for by
private money.

These drug spots are slickly produced, issue-focused partisan propaganda
paid for by the federal government. They represent an abomination of
democracy, the use of public funds in an attempt to sway public opinion and
distorted politics.