Drug Czar on Anti-Marijuana Crusade

Drug czar John Walters is a busy man these days. Between engineering yet another installment in the Office of National Drug Control Strategy's ( ONDCP ) bizarre series of ads linking marijuana users to terrorism and violence, trotting out a new offensive aimed at curbing teen pot use, trying to put out brush fires in places like California and Nevada, and threatening to disrupt cross-border trade with Canada if marijuana were legalized there, Walters appears to have a full-blown case of marijuana mania.

Beginning this week, TV viewers around the country are being treated to the latest version of the notorious Superbowl "drugs aid terror" commercials, this time targeting marijuana. The text of one ad is as follows: "This is Dan. This is the joint that Dan bought. This is the dealer that sold the joint that Dan bought. This is the smuggler that smuggled the pot to the dealer who sold the joint that Dan bought. This is the cartel that uses the smuggler that smuggled the pot to the dealer who sold the joint that Dan bought. And this is the family that was lined up by Dan's cartel and shot for getting in the way."

A second ad features teen pot-smoker "Stacey," then shows an image of her dealer, then moves up the chain to the person who supplies the dealer. But the final image is of a bed-ridden woman: "This is Carla, who was hit by a stray bullet from Stacey's supplier and paralyzed for life," the voiceover intones ominously.

Walters, who recently had to announce that earlier ONDCP propaganda campaigns had flopped, said this one was different. "These ads are different," he told Good Morning America as part of his media blitz. "We toughened up the behavior not only to look at the harms drugs can do to young people, but using their idealism, their drug buying to things they care about."

But Good Morning America also talked to young people about the ads, and some of their responses cannot be encouraging for Walters. Elisa Roupenian, a college student interviewed on the program, said her friends objected to linking drug use here to violence in other countries. "It made people mad because they pointed the finger at teenagers," she said. "Some people think that if the government didn't create the war against drugs that made such a huge black market, the terrorists and the drug cartels wouldn't be able to make such a tremendous profit," she said.

Nevertheless, expect more such ads to follow. The drug czar has a $1 billion propaganda budget for the next five years.

Walters and Surgeon General Richard Carmona on Tuesday kicked off this new effort with a Washington, DC, press conference and an "open letter" advertisement that began appearing in newspapers around the country this week.

"Did You Know? Marijuana puts kids at risk," the copy reads. "It is the most widely used illicit drug among youth today and is more potent than ever. Marijuana use can lead to a host of significant health, social, learning and behavioral problems at a crucial time in a young person's development. Getting high also impairs judgment, which can wreak havoc on teens in high-pressure social situations, leading to risky decision-making on issues like sex, criminal activity or riding with someone who is driving high. And don't be fooled by popular beliefs. Kids can get hooked on pot. Research shows that marijuana use can lead to addiction. More teens enter treatment for marijuana abuse each year than for all other illicit drugs combined."

"There's a myth that marijuana isn't as dangerous as smoking," asserted Carmona at the press conference. "That's not true. It's dangerous and addictive." Carmona and Walters were able to get 17 national medical, educational, and anti-drug groups to sign onto their letter, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National PTA.

The DC dog and pony show was interrupted, however, when DC Statehood Party candidate Adam Eidinger jumped onstage as Walters spoke. Holding a sign saying "Free Bryan Epis," the California medical marijuana provider scheduled to be sentenced to federal prison next month, Eidinger denounced the prosecution of Epis and the persecution of medical marijuana users, throwing out flyers until he was ejected by Secret Service agents ( http://www.drugwar.com/pczarinterrupted.shtm ).

Walters also announced this week that he plans at least three trips to Nevada to lobby against that state's initiative to remove civil and criminal penalties for the possession of up to three ounces of marijuana.

Aside from accusing the Canadian Senate's panel that recommended legalizing marijuana of being fools, Walters has also blustered about the impact Canadian legalization could have on cross-border trade. Walters called the Canadians "naive" to believe that marijuana has any medical uses. "The claim that marijuana is an efficacious medicine is a lie," he told a Detroit news conference. "It is used by people who want to legalize marijuana, cynically."

In his Detroit appearance Walters warned that the US would take unspecified additional actions at the border if Canada legalized pot. "We will do what is necessary to protect this country," he said.

Throughout the past two weeks Walters has repeatedly made such claims as "marijuana is a dangerous drug," "American drug users contribute to terrorism," that US pot prohibition is based on scientific evidence, and "today more young people are being admitted and presented for treatment of marijuana than for alcohol."

While some academics, activists and drug reformers are attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of Walters' lies, half-truths, and distortions, others are arguing that it is an exercise in futility.

"Walters is a rabid dog and chronic pathological liar," said NORML's Allen St. Pierre. "But the drug reform movement does not have the media access to rebut him line by line, except on the Internet," he told DRCNet. "He is a bullshit factory; to reply in kind would take too long and wouldn't be heard."

That doesn't mean the movement should just lie back and let itself be slandered, St. Pierre said. "We can respond in two ways. First, everyone who thinks this campaign is stupid and a waste of money can get on the phone and tell Congress to cut funding," he suggested. "We can also contact the media that are running these ads and threaten to boycott them. We can write letters saying, 'I saw you run this ad and I will not tolerate it and I will boycott your stations and tell your other advertisers that I'm not seeing their ads because I'm not watching your stations,'" St. Pierre suggested.

For Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy, the anti-pot offensive is a sign that the prohibitionists are running scared. "They know they're losing the education war on marijuana. With a higher percentage of the population having had personal experience with marijuana as the population ages, the public is catching onto the truth," he told DRCNet. "So Walters has to resort to false statements. What they don't want to face up to is the fact that no matter how safe or unsafe a drug is, the sensible policy option in to bring it within the law, regulate it and control it."

The debate about marijuana's safety is irrelevant, Zeese argued. "All of these claims have been refuted before," he said. "We have to focus on the reality that the most sensible policy is legal control."

That jibes with my figures (under "Totals and Costs"), although mine are from 1998. Also, this figure is for both prisons and jails.

But with 646,000 arrests, this figure means that just a little over 2% of arrestees will serve time. This is a problem? Also, I would guess that those who do serve time in jail or prison (for simple possesson) either had multiple arrests for possession, or were carrying a whole bunch of pot. In that case, they could be considered to be arrested for stupidity.

You're giving me a headache with all the Jefferson quotes.

For just a second, set aside the drug issue. What would Thomas Jefferson say about our society and our government if he were alive today? Don't you think that the society/government to which he was referring doesn't exist today?

The world isn't flat, so to take quotes from the Flat Earth Society would be pointless. Ditto Jefferson.

If our society and our government today were as Jefferson described, I would understand your argument. But I'll have to go with Ann Coulter (ex-Libertarian) on this issue and work to change our society to be more like Jefferson's ideals before addressing the drug issue.

I asked you two question and your response/answer is that you ask a question. That's widely considered as bad form, if not intent to be evasive. I already know the answer to the questions when I ask them of myself. I want to know what your answers are.

If alcohol was outlawed, what sentence do you think the court should hand down to a person caught with a case of whiskey?

What about a person caught with an ounce of marijuana; what sentence do you think they should get?

I never thought I would see a poster who made Roscoe and Dane seem reasonable by comparison!(upon reflection, that's a tad harsh)

Surely, you are one of those moderns of whom it is said, "They think in slogans and speak in bullets."

Your 20th Century-style utopian socialist dreams will die aborning; that we know for sure.

The Soviets, the Nazizs, the Maoists, the Fascists...all came to grief. Your feeble dreams will come to nothing, also.

There will be trials, if you're lucky! ;^)

Driver -> gas station -> oil firms -> Saudi Arabia -> Saudi Royal Family -> Osama bin Laden.

Here's an even better one for you:

U.S. Taxpayer > IRS > U.S. Treasury > Foreign Aid Bill > $500 million to the Palestinian Authority > Al Qaeda.

Now, Mr. Walters, tell me again where terrorists get their money?

What sentence do you think the court should impose for posession of an hand grenade?

Sentence? If anything, the gov't should subsidize hand grenade purchases. It's a protected second amendment 'arm'. (US v Miller: the 2A applies to weapons used by the infantry)

SPIRITUAL BENEFITS: That which enlivens is understood as the SPIRIT. In these times of secular values, when the life force is not recognized as being an expression of the holy, when in fact, the notion of a plane of existence beyond the material is not acknowledged, the search for meaning nevertheless perseveres.

New Age anti-religious claptrap that can only be believed by someone under the influence of drugs!

Every time is think the antiWOD folks might have a point, I read some of this obvious nonsense and realize how much BRAIN DAMAGE using this stuff must cause! LOL!

That the "medical marijuana" ploy is being used by people who want to legalize marijuana, cynically.

This is certainly true. If it was really a medical issue, they'd take it up with the FDA, not states, and propose allowing it via prescriptions only.

BTW, I am all FOR considering how we might end the FDA stranglehold on Medical Drugs and their uses, especially for "orphan drugs". There are examples of life-saving drugs "on the shelf" unapproved, with a far more urgent need than cannabis for giving people the freedom to use them.

Just for the purposes of disclosure, "Dane" is an admitted ex-druggie.So until he turns himself in for the crimes he commited and is jailed or shot (as he would have others who made the same life choices he made), pay no attention to him whatsoever. Except to slap him in the head as you walk by.

This is an Ad Hominem attack. I've seen folks who never tried drugs attacked for anti-drug views and attitudes because they dont "know" what it's really like. I guess my own non-existent to miniscule experience puts me out of bounds too, if I told you no sane person should touch the stuff.

So who exactly will you listen to? That leaves a world-view impervious to dissent. As church lady might say , how conveeeenient, hmmm.

This is an Ad Hominem attack. I've seen folks who never tried drugs attacked for anti-drug views and attitudes because they dont "know" what it's really like.

That's why they always demand to be told. They're as happy to employ the one ad hominem attack as the other.

"Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." -- Edmund Burke

This is a great quote, a keeper. (irrespective of WOD positions, btw, this is what National Review believes in. Ultimately we want a parnternship that is a Lockean one, a contract among free citizens to great a Free and Civil Society. That's the ideal, anyway.) Thanks.

Dude. No way. I was drinking 2-3 20 oz. bottles of diet coke a day up until Friday because on Thursday I was so jittery from the caffeine i could hardly sit still. The next day i didn't drink any. I had the most awful headache that not even Tylenol or asprin could relieve. I was lethargic. Caffeine is absolutely an intoxicant.

Then lay off it! Jeez, 60oz, forget about your brain effects, you're going to be killing your bladder at that rate!

Withdrawal is one thing but as for "intoxicant" term, I've yet to here of people getting charged for "driving under influence of caffeine". You think people should be? LOL.

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