BUSH ADS FOCUS ON WRONG DRUG

"Alcohol kills six times more teen-agers than all other drugs combined.
What's your kid doing tonight?"

That's one of the advertising messages to be used in the recently announced
campaign to combat underage drinking.

Billboards around Springfield show a handsome NASCAR driver, a race car
emblazoned with beer logos and a bottle of beer. The message to the kids
seems to be "beer will make you the guy every boy wants to be and every
girl wants to be with."

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, recently embarked on a
$547,000-per-day national advertising campaign proclaiming marijuana as the
greatest hazard our kids are facing, even though there isn't a single
documented death from marijuana toxicity or overdose.

He says kids would be confused if we allowed the sick and dying to use
marijuana as medicine, and has rededicated himself to the elimination of
marijuana from the Earth and the arrest of anybody possessing this
God-given plant.

The government claims marijuana is a "gateway" drug, has potential (but
unverifiable) negative health consequences and users might drive a car and
kill somebody.

The truth is most hard drug users identify alcohol or tobacco, not
marijuana, as their "gateway" into drug use.

We don't incarcerate adult or underage alcohol or tobacco users even though
the proof of negative health consequences and deaths are well documented.

And if adults can legally drink themselves to death as long as they use a
designated driver and avoid public drunkenness, why can't we apply the same
standards to adults who consume marijuana, a substance that doesn't kill?

Carl Smith, Ozark