DEVIL'S ADVOCATE: TEEN DRUG USE NOT BEHIND TERRORISM

The commercial looks familiar because we've all been branded by constant
repetition from credit card companies.

The costs of various items and necessities that revolve around the Sept. 11
attacks slowly reveal themselves on the screen. Plane tickets. Explosives.
Box cutters. Prices, in a well-known font, appear next to the item names.

It's familiar, yet twisted, like a prom punch that's been spiked.

But instead of ending with "priceless," as other commercials of the same
style always do, the ending links teenage drug use with providing
terrorists with the means to attack us.

"Where do terrorists get their money? If you buy drugs, it could come from
you."

While this commercial, one of two with the same message, effectively links
the war on drugs with the war on terror, two open-ended campaigns that have
no end game and can not be won until their root causes are addressed, it
sidesteps the real issues.

Money for the Sept. 11 attacks did not come from teen-agers buying pot or
ecstasy. It came from Saudi Arabia, like 15 of the 19 terrorists themselves.

While it's true that money spent on various drugs around the world do help
pay for terrorist activities (Islamic fundamentalist and otherwise), much
of the government's current push is unsubstantiated. The vast majority of
the drugs grown and processed in Afghanistan are poppy-based, like heroin
or opium.

Without denying that some of their product has undoubtedly reached U.S.
shores, many of the other drugs found in this country come from Asia, South
America or are grown and processed right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Without advocating the use of any illegal substance, I think the
implication that teen-agers smoking pot or dropping ecstasy (both of which
can be very dangerous, not to mention result in fines, jail time, and/or
brain damage and a good stiff grounding) supplied Osama bin Laden, a Saudi
multi-millionaire, with funding for the Sept. 11 attacks must have come
from someone who was doing a little home-testing on the theory.

Our dependence on oil is what continues to supply our enemies with enough
money to attack us. And our dependence on oil leads to our dependence on
nations like Saudi Arabia, who really don't like us or anything we stand
for -- except money.

Last week, the Saudi Crown Prince met with President Bush at his Texas
ranch to talk about how the United State's continued support for Israel
could put a strain on our relationship with the most oil rich chunk of
desert on the planet.

What? They're worried about us soiling the relationship?

This is the same country that supplied passports to 15 of the 19 Sept. 11
hijackers and more recently raised an astounding $92 million in a telethon
held in support of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, who, by the
way, Saudi diplomats call "martyrs."

Meanwhile, according to German newspapers, the Saudi government is offering
$5,000 for each al Qaida member willing to relocate to the West Bank or
Gaza Strip.

To break our ties to Saudi Arabia is to break our ties to terror. We are
all guilty. Each one of us that drives a gas-guzzler to work or school by
his or herself has played a larger part than some stoner puffing a doobie
before a Phish concert.

As one of my friends put it recently, "I drive an SUV and I have blood on
my hands."

The time has come to talk of increased gas mileage requirements and a focus
on renewable fuels. I believe in American ingenuity and I know that there
are people right now trying to make money on renewable energy and when they
do, this world will not only be a cleaner place, but countries like Saudi
Arabia will no longer have us over a barrel (or 10.4 million barrels a day,
to be more precise).

Ah, but we'll never hear that from an administration of oil barons that met
with each oil company in turn (and sometimes over and over again) before
releasing an energy policy that not only slashes the renewable energy and
energy conservation budget, but only prolongs our dependency on foreign oil
while attempting to destroy a pristine piece on Alaskan wilderness.

We do not know how much, if any, oil is locked under the Alaskan National
Wildlife Preserve (ANWR). And while the only way to find out is to dig, the
consequences can not even begin to be measured; changes in animal migratory
patterns, air and land temperature changes, noise, pollution, garbage, just
to name a few.

Luckily, the Senate last week voted against Alaskan drilling, choosing to
put the health of the planet ahead of their wallets and campaign war
chests. Sometimes they surprise even me.

Speaking of the administration's energy policy and its continued reliance
on a limited resource supplied mainly by our enemies, it should warm your
heart to know that documents indicate that while Vice President Cheney, who
was given a $25 million retirement package from Haliburton Oil just days
before accepting his nomination, met with industry big wigs, he avoided
alternate and renewable energy lobbies like the plague.

In fact, according to Reuters, the administration used $137,615 from the
Energy Department's solar and renewable energy and energy conservation
budget to produce 10,000 copies of the plan, which calls for 50 percent
cuts to renewable resources.

An additional $176 was taken to pay for an Alaskan trip by Andrew
Lundquist, task force staff director, to promote the plan, which includes
drilling throughout the ANWR.

Sort of ironic, isn't it? If the budget had already been cut there would
have been no money to print their report calling for the cuts.