CRITICS DECRY ADS LINKING DRUGS, TERROR

White House Says Tactics Are Justified

WASHINGTON -- With the war on terrorism threatening to siphon support,
money and attention from the fight against drugs, Bush administration
officials increasingly are linking terrorist groups with drug traffickers.
But some experts in drug control believe it is a dubious and dangerous
strategy that could backfire.

The strategy, featuring splashy television commercials that debuted during
January's Super Bowl, tells teenagers that by buying drugs they are handing
money to the Sept. 11 terrorists and their ilk. It is backed by an official
push to make sure the anti-drug cause does not get swallowed up by the
anti-terror campaign but becomes part of it.

That message is factually suspect, some in drug control say, because most
drug money goes nowhere near terrorists. Worse, they add, fingering
America's millions of drug users, including pot-smoking teenagers, as
accomplices to terrorism is unrealistic and counterproductive.

"It's despicable and dangerous," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director
of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that favors alternatives to the drug
war. "When you start labeling tens of millions of Americans as accomplices
to terrorists or de facto murderers, you are creating and stirring an
atmosphere of intolerance and hate-mongering that ends up being destructive
and dangerous to the broader society."

Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said
the new message simply tells it like it is.

"Every time you buy drugs, the money goes to people who hurt, kill and
maim," Riley said. "People won't buy a brand of sneakers because they use
substandard labor in another part of the world. This money goes to people
who are far, far worse than that."

The administration seized on the new message in the wake of Sept. 11 and
shows no signs of letting go. Riley's office is running an elaborate ad
campaign, leaders are testifying before Congress, officials are meeting in
high-profile conferences, budget documents are being carefully crafted; all
to make one basic point--that terrorists use drug money to finance their
evil works.

In one sense, the new approach fits Bush's current pattern of casting many
of his goals as crucial to the war on terrorism, from tax cuts to health
care to energy policy. But the drug message is being broadcast with special
vehemence.

The message sprang into public notice when the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, often called the drug czar's office, launched a $10 million
advertising campaign with two jarring 30-second ads during the Super Bowl.
The ads have run frequently since, and print versions have appeared in
nearly 200 newspapers.

In one, a young man says, "Yesterday afternoon, I did my laundry, went out
for a run, and helped torture someone's dad." In another, a youth says,
"Last weekend I washed my car, hung out with a few friends, and helped
murder a family in Colombia."

The ads conclude somberly, "Drug money helps support terror. Buy drugs and
you could be supporting it, too."

The idea, sponsors say, is to get through to jaded young men and women who
have been contemptuous of previous anti-drug messages and who view drug use
as a victimless crime and a personal choice.

"One of the reasons these ads are so potent is that they appeal to the
idealism of young people," drug czar John Walters said recently. "Where
previous anti-drug ads have focused on the devastating toll that drugs take
on individuals, these ads speak to young people's desire to make the world
a better place."

Ads only part of the strategy

The ads are only a small part of the administration's new
drugs-equal-terror campaign. Last December, Bush signed a new anti-drug
initiative and told his audience: "Terrorists use drug profits to fund
their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight
against terror in America."

Last week, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft announced the indictment of three
members of a Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, accused of conspiring to ship cocaine into the U.S., and
he stressed the "evil interdependence" between drugs and terrorism.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Drug Enforcement Administration
convened its first-ever conference on drugs and terrorism.

In pushing a $1.7 billion budget request, DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson
played up the drugs-terror connection. Hutchinson knows he must compete
with the enormous spending on the war on terrorism; Congress approved $40
billion to fight terrorism last year, and Bush is now asking for $27
billion more.

In asking Congress last month for a budget increase, Hutchinson said the
proposal would give the DEA "not only the money needed to fight drug abuse
and drug trafficking, but would also help break the historic link between
drugs, violence and terrorism."

Critics: Connection is forced

Those who oppose the war on drugs are distressed by this drumbeat. The new
message, in their view, is merely a way to reinvigorate a discredited war
on drugs. Only a tiny fraction of drug dollars flows to terrorists, they
said, and the assertion that buying drugs helps terrorism is questionable
at best.

"You have to stretch a long way to make that plausible," said Peter Reuter,
a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland. "Marijuana, which is
what the vast majority of drug users use, is grown primarily in the United
States and Mexico and has no connection with terrorism."

Others said a portion of the money from many purchases--from diamonds to
athletic shoes--goes to unsavory characters, so drugs are hardly unique in
this way. And they questioned the ads' effectiveness, saying skeptical
teenagers were unlikely to buy the argument that smoking marijuana helps
Osama bin Laden.

"This is an effort to demonize drug users," said Eric Sterling, president
of the liberal Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "At a time when many are
talking about the importance of drug treatment, this rhetoric sends the
message that drug users are not people with chemical dependencies, they are
aiding and abetting terrorists and need to be locked up."

Riley, the drug czar's spokesman, said such arguments merely reflect the
message's effectiveness.

"The reason the drug legalizers have been incredibly critical of these ads
is that their argument has always been, `Hey, drug use doesn't hurt anyone
else, it's my choice,'" Riley said. "This exposes that. When you buy drugs,
you are hurting other people."

Supporters of the campaign say it is obvious that terrorism and drug
dealing form a seamless web: Terrorists use drugs to finance their killing,
and drug lords kill to protect their trafficking.

The FARC, a group that has murdered and kidnapped thousands, receives $300
million a year from cocaine trafficking, U.S. officials say. The Taliban,
while officially banning poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, nonetheless
profited financially from the opium trade, according to the DEA.

Critics say the Northern Alliance, America's ally in the war, was involved
heavily in the narcotics trade. But the DEA says the Taliban ran a "drug
state" whose economy "was exceptionally dependent on opium," and that bin
Laden financed and facilitated heroin trafficking.

"Some of the critics say, `I just buy my marijuana locally, it probably
comes from Mexico,'" Riley said. "What do they think, it's from some nice
Mexican farmer who FedExes it to your door? It goes through the hands of
hideously violent people who kill women and children and probably use
organized crime to distribute it in the United States."

Right or wrong, the public is likely to see more of the drugs-and-terror
message in the future. Walters, the drug czar, has ordered up another batch
of ads.

"Our goal was to introduce an idea," Walters said. "I believe we have
accomplished that goal."