TERRIBLE THINGS

The Government Defends Its Anti-Drug Ads.

"If you don't want something to be true," says the headline over a
full-page ad in today's New York Times, "does that make it
propaganda?"

No. Here is what makes it propaganda: It aims not to educate people
but to shape their behavior by presenting a distorted, one-sided
interpretation of reality that ignores important information as well
as contrary perspectives. That's an accurate description of the
federal government's anti-drug ads, which is why the Office of
National Drug Control Policy feels the need to defend them in
nationwide newspaper ads.

In particular, the ad defends the proposition that drug users are
accessories to "intimidation, bribery, torture and murder." Drug
money, you see, "funds terrible things," and "drug money comes from
drug buyers. So if people stopped buying drugs, there wouldn't be a
drug market. No drug market, no drug dealers. No drug dealers, no drug
violence, corruption and misery."

The first problem with this syllogism is its unstated moral premise:
If some of the people who profit from the sale of a product do
"terrible things," anyone who consumes the product is responsible for
those crimes. By this logic, everyone who drives a car is responsible
for terrorism because of the links between oil and radical Islam.

"When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden," comic Bill Maher
suggests in the title of his new book. Meanwhile, a little less tongue
in cheek, columnist Arianna Huffington has suggested an ad campaign
highlighting the connection between oil consumption and terrorism. A
script by ad writer Scott Burns has SUV drivers confessing, "I gassed
40,000 Kurds," "I helped hijack an airplane," and "I helped blow up a
nightclub." Huffington says she is raising money to produce the ads.
Oddly, the Bush administration has not volunteered to chip in.

The other problem with blaming drug buyers for violence is that the
nexus between drugs and "intimidation, bribery, torture and murder"
exists because the government created it. No prohibition, no black
market. No black market, no black market violence and corruption.

In this light, drug czar John Walters and other supporters of the
status quo bear more responsibility for "terrible things" than the
average pot smoker or coke sniffer. No wonder they're so defensive.