ADS LINKING DRUGS, TERRORISM CREATE DIVIDE

WASHINGTON - "Timmy," a fresh-faced teen-ager, stares from the TV screen
and says matter-of-factly: "I killed grandmas. I killed daughters. I killed
firemen. I killed policemen."

Then he adds, casually: "Technically, I didn't kill these people. I just
kind of helped."

A message at the bottom of the screen carries an ominous warning: "Where do
terrorists get their money? If you buy drugs, some of it may come from you."

Timmy and several other teens are the stars of a powerful, provocative
advertising campaign from the White House drug control office that uses
more than $10 million in taxpayer funds to link the war on drugs to the war
on terrorism.

It's in-your-face television, difficult to ignore. Some anti-drug
activists, such as Peggy Sapp of Miami, praise the ads for "finally forcing
kids to face the consequences of their actions."

Critics of the drug war deride them as slick fear mongering.

"Blaming nonviolent kids for terrorism is like blaming beer drinkers for Al
Capone's murders," said Ethan Nadelman, director of the New York-based Drug
Policy Alliance, which wants to decriminalize most drug use.

The campaign began with $3.5 million high-impact spots during the Super
Bowl. The ads will continue at least until June on TV and in print. The new
spots with Timmy and others will air nationwide in the next few weeks.

The goal: shame casual drug users by telling them drugs help pay for
terrorism elsewhere, maybe in the United States.

The new White House drug czar, John Walters, said in a recent interview
that they appeal to young people's idealism by putting drug use and its
impact in a wider, global context. Past public service ads focused on the
harmful effects of drugs.

"There's a heightened awareness since September 11 that there are real
enemies and harms that can be brought home," Walters said. "And we were
careful to check all the facts."

But some analysts say the campaign is an effort to repackage the drug war
as a critical component of President Bush's popular crusade against global
terrorism.

"The drug bureaucracy appears to believe that no one will take its drug war
seriously unless the federal government resorts to propaganda worthy of the
Soviet Union," wrote Christopher Caldwell, senior editor at the
conservative Weekly Standard.

Each line of dialogue in the ads is explained on the drug control office's
Web site (theantidrug.com) by real-world examples from Mexico and Colombia.

The office cites a State Department report from October that found that 12
of 28 terrorist groups traffic in drugs.

A strong link is relatively easy to demonstrate in Colombia, where
guerrillas and paramilitaries traffic in drugs while killing officials,
police and civilians.

The language used in the ads suggests a direct link between drug
trafficking and the al-Qaida terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon on Sept. 11. But the closest documented connection between
al-Qaida and drug trafficking is that the former Taliban regime, which
sheltered al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, profited from
that country's longstanding opium trade -- but also took steps to halt it.