TERROR TACTIC

The Government Blames Drug Users For The Violence Created By Its Disastrous
Policies.

The federal government has told many outrageous lies about drugs over the
years: Marijuana turns you into a killer. LSD causes birth defects. Crack
is instantly addictive.

But for sheer chutzpah, it's hard to beat the new "public service
announcements" blaming drug users for murder and terrorism. Through
misdirection and emotional manipulation, the ads seek to shift
responsibility for the death and destruction caused by the war on drugs.

Unlike past propaganda, the ads do not claim drug users themselves are
violent. Rather, they are charged with guilt by association.

"I helped murder families in Colombia," begins
one TV spot ( http://www.mediacampaign.org/multimedia/ihelped.mov ),
in which actors portraying recreational drug users offer a series of such
confessions: "I helped kidnap people's dads....I helped kids learn how to
kill....I helped kill a policeman....I helped a bomber get a fake
passport....I helped kill a judge....I helped blow up buildings."

The confessions alternate with statements that the
Office of National Drug Control Policy ( http://www.mediacampaign.org ),
which commissioned the ads and bought the air time with
taxpayers' money, calls "excuses": "It was just innocent fun....Hey, just
some harmless fun.....All the kids do it....My life, my body....It's not
like I was hurting anybody else."

The spot closes with two sentences in white on a black background: "Drug
money supports terror. If you buy drugs, you might too."

A second ad ( http://www.mediacampaign.org/multimedia/ak47.mov )
shows terrorists gathering the tools of their trade--fake IDs, box cutters,
plastic explosives, rental cars, AK-47s, ski masks--while the price of each
item is displayed on the screen. "Where do terrorists get their money?"
asks the tag line. "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you."

The overt message of the first ad and the underlying assumption of the
second one is that drug users are oblivious to the moral implications of
their behavior. Even if neither they nor anyone they know suffers from
their drug use, their taste for illicit intoxicants causes total strangers
to be gunned down or blown up.

In light of this reality, the government is saying, the idea that people
should have the right to control their own bodies is absurd, if not
offensive. The very notion of "innocent fun" is suspect, no more than an
"excuse" masking the ugly truth that drug users have blood on their hands.

Even on the face of it, this message is puzzling. It seems to be based on
the premise that consumers bear responsibility for the actions of anyone
who was involved in the manufacture or distribution of products they use.

This is a heavy burden to bear, and not just for consumers of illegal
products. Can you vouch for the moral character of everyone who had a hand
in producing and selling the gas in your car, the clothes in your closet,
the coffee in your cup?

At the same time, the ads imply that people who get their drugs from
sources untainted by violence--friendly marijuana growers, say--are off the
hook. Their fun really is harmless, presumably, so they should be left
alone. Yet that is something the government, which arrested a record
( http://www.norml.org/news/archives/01-10-25.shtml ) 734,498
people on marijuana charges in 2000, is plainly unwilling to do.

What makes the ads especially galling, however, is that the violence they
cite (to the extent that it really is related to the drug trade) would not
be occurring if it weren't for the war on drugs. By creating a black
market, prohibition replaces peaceful businessmen with violent criminals.
It generates artificial profits for thugs, guerillas, and terrorists.

In other words, the murdered families, the kidnapped fathers, the homicidal
children, the dead policemen, the terrorist bombs, the assassinated judges,
and the devastated buildings that the government wants to blame on drug
users are all predictable consequences of its own disastrous policies. If
any group, aside from the perpetrators themselves, bears responsibility for
"narco-terror," it's the politicians and bureaucrats who insist upon using
force to stop people from altering their consciousness in unapproved ways.

Like the drug users portrayed in the government's ads, the drug warriors
offer excuses as the bodies pile up: "Drugs are wrong....We must not
surrender....We have to protect our children....We're determined to achieve
a drug-free society." Unlike the drug users, however, they cannot plausibly
claim that they're not hurting anyone.

The war on drugs supports terror. If you support the war on drugs, you
support terror too.