CANNABIS ISSUE REHASHED

If most parents knew there was a federally funded organization lying to
their children about the effects of drug use, they would likely be appalled
and seek to have the organization's funding removed. Yet the frightening
truth is that such a group exists, operating under the family-friendly
monicker, Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA). In its newest line of
Public Service Announcements (PSAs), the group equates marijuana use with
wrongful death, rape and even murder...crimes that sensible people realize
marijuana usage alone would never lead to. Last year, the American public
was misled into thinking that every joint they smoked contributed to
international terrorism, and recently that using marijuana will almost
certainly result in acts of domestic violence.

Lies. The "anti-drug."

PDFA's well-intentioned but inaccurate PSAs feature a variety of scenarios,
each ending with someone dying, being raped or going to jail. In reality,
only the latter is a likely consequence of using marijuana.

In one of the ads, two male teenagers smoke pot in what appears to be the
home office of one of their fathers, and, as the two adolescents continue
to smoke, they stumble across a handgun. To see if it's loaded, one of the
teens promptly picks up the gun and shoots directly at his friend. The gun
is, of course, loaded, and the guilty teen, totally under the "control" of
the marijuana, never thought to check for bullets or point the gun anywhere
except directly at his friend. The entire grisly scene is followed by the
words "Marijuana: Harmless?"

If this television spot sounds totally implausible, even ridiculous, that's
because it is, and the others are just like it. The ad would be
better-aimed at parents who fail to lock up their handguns. The fact
remains that people don't test to see if a gun is loaded by blindly
pointing it at their best friend and squeezing the trigger, stoned or not.
The ad's message is not simply that marijuana distorts perception and
judgement, it is that if you smoke weed, you will be shot or perhaps shoot
someone else. This is false.

All of these ads play on what I call a "worst case scenario" fear. The most
horrible thing that can happen in any one of the given commercials always
does, and, without fail, marijuana is to blame.

Another of the PSAs features a car full of young people at a fast food
window smoking marijuana. The teens get their food, and as they are pulling
out, a child on a bicycle pulls out in front of them from behind a corner,
totally getting run over by the "negligent" driver in the process. If only
the teens hadn't been smoking marijuana, the commercial implies, perhaps
the little girl on the bicycle would have lived.

The fact that this child appears to be younger than 5 years old and riding
a bike without parental supervision along a busy commercial fairway is
never addressed. Again, the ad would better serve parents who let their
children play in the street unattended. Anyone, regardless of age, who
darts in front of a moving car is likely to get run over. Marijuana has
nothing to do with it.

Perhaps most intriguing is the spot in which two teens, a male and a
female, smoke marijuana at a party. After smoking a few bowls of weed from
a pipe, the female begins to look comatose, and her male companion proceeds
to rape her in front of all the people at the party. Not surprisingly, no
one comes to her aid, and viewers are again asked "Marijuana: Harmless?"

Here, marijuana use leads to an impromptu rape at this poor woman's
expense. Mark Tutssel, vice-chairman of Leo Burnett USA, PDFA's ad agency,
said in a press release that the company's PSAs dealt with "everyday
occurences." I would venture to say that none of the aforementioned
scenarios occurs every day, if at all, and PDFA, which prides itself on
truth, is willfully misleading the American public about the "dangers" of
marijuana.

Here are the facts. The Marijuana Policy Project's Web site, www.mpp.org,
lists that 11 of our 50 states consider marijuana to be a medicine and have
decriminalized it. Of these states, California alone saves $100 million
each year in reduced arrests, according to the group's Web site. Imagine
what the extra money could do for California and how much might be saved if
marijuana was legalized outright.

In fact, the Web site states that the government has been supplying
American citizens with medicinal marijuana for more than 20 years. There is
even a pill form of the drug, called Marinol, available only by
prescription. So is marijuana the scourge of society and the corruptor of
youth? The U.S. government doesn't seem to think so.

When dealing with tough issues such as drug use, one must take the good
with the bad. Marijuana can arguably be said to cure more than it causes,
and its medicinal qualities cannot be ignored. Could there be negative
effects of using marijuana? Sure, but to think that smoking pot will almost
certainly lead to accidental death, rape, or murder, you would have to be,
well, high.