Posted on 03/12/2007 8:21:26 AM PDT by cryptical
Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Souder recently took to the airwaves to defend one of the Bush administration’s sacred cows: the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.
If you’ve had access to a television or a newspaper over the past few years, you’re familiar with the federal ad campaign. It’s the one that’s spent over $2 billion since 1998 to produce public-service announcements implying that smoking pot supports al-Qaida and may make you pregnant, among other dubious anti-drug messages. So dubious, in fact, that the campaign has flopped miserably among its target audience. Of course, this fact matters not to the White House, which recently demanded $130 million to run the ads through 2008 – a 31 percent increase over current funding levels.
Speaking recently with MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Souder vehemently defended the administration’s decision to increase spending for the much-maligned campaign, stating, “The fact is, I believe in results and conservatives believe in results.” That said, the results couldn’t be any worse.
Consider this:
♦ A 2002 review by the research firm Westat Inc. and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found “no statistically significant decline in marijuana use or improvement in beliefs and attitudes about marijuana use” attributable to the media campaign. Authors of the report – which was sponsored by the federal government – later told Congress that the negative results were among the worst in the history of large-scale public communication campaigns.
♦ A 2003 performance assessment by the White House Office of Management and Budget criticized the Media Campaign for failing to achieve any tangible goals or objectives. There exists “no evidence that paid media messages have a direct effect on youth drug-related behavior,” the report concluded.
♦ An August Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluation reported: “[E]xposure to the advertisements generally did not lead youth to disapprove of using drugs and may have promoted perceptions among exposed youth that others’ drug use was normal. [E]xposure to the campaign did not prevent initiation of marijuana use and had no effect on curtailing current users’ marijuana use.”
♦ A January Texas State University study published in the journal Addictive Behaviors reported that teens are more likely to express their intent to use marijuana after viewing the Feds’ anti-pot ads. Investigators concluded, “It appears that ... anti-marijuana public statement announcements used in national anti-drug campaigns in the U.S. produce immediate effects opposite [of those] intended by the creators of the campaign.”
Souder’s response? “Just because some study comes to some conclusion that the liberals doing the study wanted to have, doesn’t mean the study is accurate. Results are results.”
Indeed. And in this case, the results are in. There is nothing to be gained by exaggerating claims of marijuana’s alleged harms. (In the same MSNBC interview, Souder claimed – falsely – that thousands of Americans die every year from the occasional toke.) On the contrary, by overstating pot’s potential dangers, America’s policymakers and law enforcement community undermine their credibility and ability to effectively educate the public of the risks that may be associated with cannabis or with more dangerous drugs. This is the reason why the Feds’ multibillion dollar media campaign, and the government’s drug ‘war’ efforts overall, have consistently fizzled.
Rather than continue down this failed path, federal officials like Rep. Souder ought to take a page from the government’s far more successful campaigns discouraging drunken driving and teen tobacco smoking, both of which have fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s. America has not achieved these results by arbitrarily outlawing the use of alcohol or tobacco, or by targeting and arresting adults who use these products responsibly, but through honest, health- and science-based education campaigns.
Until we as a nation apply these same principles to our educational efforts regarding cannabis, there will be little change in either teens’ perceptions of pot or their patterns of marijuana use, regardless of how much money Souder and Congress spend.
These ads always make me want to do drugs! It amazes me that someone is actually paid money to produce such absolute crap.
Since when have poor results, or even terrible or tragic results, of a government program been a reason for that program to get a funding cut?
How's that war on poverty coming along?
It's simply incredible that so much money is tied to absolutely no meaningful metric whatsoever. This, literally, is throwing money at a problem to look like you're doing something to solve it.
From all the research I've seen and read, the worst thing about pot is that it's ILLEGAL.
But then again, since illegal really means only what our government decides it means, it's rather hypocritical to tell kids not to smoke a weed.
We should give immediate amnesty to all people convicted of of possessing or consuming marijuana!
How do I explain to my kids that we are a nation of laws and that laws need to be followed because they ARE laws.
Anyone?
It's going great! Over a trillion hard earned taxpayer dollars squandered and more poverty than ever*, AND the government (taxpayer) fueled poverty industry is booming. Just think of the number of bureaucrats you money has supported over the years. Just think of the number of illegitimate children (+ crack babies) your tax dollars have financed. Just think of the irresponsible lifestyles we've subsidized! How can you think it's a failure?
*One of the rules of any government program is that it be self perpetuating so as to provide as many sinecures for bureaucrats as possible
One of the rules of any government program is that it be self perpetuating so as to provide as many sinecures for bureaucrats as possible
In regards to the shop-worn mantra that: Legalizing marijuana sends the wrong signal or message...
For over a hundred years politicians and bureaucrats have been sending the wrong signal. That signal is that they know best how to take care of you and everybody. Their hidden authoritarian agenda manifested their obvious fascist/socialist/collectivist welfare state. Careful not to call politicians and bureaucrats the nanny state because that would imply they have good intentions for the citizens rather than usurping power and glory for themselves as their driving motivation. For the most part the main-stream media facilitated them. Parasitical elites -- the lot of them.
The best the government can do is protect citizens from foreign invasion. It can do crime follow up on U.S. soil but is seldom there when a real crime is being committed. Real crimes are things that 98% of the population doesn't do; they don't initiate force, threat of force or fraud against persons or their property.
If politicians and bureaucrats cared about citizens they'd not prohibit marijuana. At most they'd have an opinion on it. Leaving to each citizen; his and her choice of self-medication and diet -- what a person puts into their body. Preferably with the advice of a competent doctor.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken
And that's how we got a quarter-million laws and regulations. Not to benefit the citizens and society, but rather, for parasitical elites to usurp power and glory while garnering unearned paychecks. With 95% of the laws and regulations comes the cost of lost opportunity for citizens and society.
Value destruction by common criminals is dwarfed by the trillion dollars of value destruction by parasitical elite fraudsters. Without a doubt value creators/producers in science and business have cared for citizens and society several magnitude more effectively than parasitical elites in government. And that's true despite the massive opportunity cost inflicted upon them by government officials.
The Ultimate Battle is On...
Who is the value producer
versus
Who is the value destroyer?
"National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign."
Rename it "National Anti-Youth Drug Media Campaign", just to reflect reality - that might help.
The hypocrisy of so-called 'conservatives' like Souder never ceases to amaze me. They're the same people who (rightly) criticize the Left for framing policy arguments in terms of emotion and focusing on the good intentions of a given government policy rather than good results, yet completely ignore the uniformly bad results that continue from the policies of the failed War on Some Drugs.
People like Souder, Bill Bennett, et al defending those idiotic ONDCP spots remind me of some leftist demagogue like Ted Kennedy accusing the Republicans of starving children by only supporting a 7% increase in the school lunch program instead of the 12% that the 'Rats wanted. Wake up - if kids view these stupid demagogic scare tactics about supporting Bin Laden if they smoke a joint as what they really are - bald face lies - then what else are they going to disbelieve?
Or worse, what will they believe? "Hmmm ... if they're lying that badly about pot, then maybe they're lying about 9/11, too ... maybe Bush and Cheney really did blow up the WTC" ...
It's time our government starts telling the truth about marijuana - end the Reefer Madness propaganda that they've fed us for the last 70 years, end federal prohibition, let the states set policy like they do for alcohol and tobacco, and let Harry Anslinger's ghost rest in peace.
Carlson: ... and how many people died from marijuana overdoses last year?
Souder: Uh, if you count the, uh, uh, amount of crime associated with marijuana...
Carlson: No, no, just marijuana overdoses. Just the drug itself, which you said is like cocaine now. How many people died from it?
Souder: Uh, I don't, I don't, uh. 65 percent of emergency room admissions for drug abuse are marijuana.
Carlson: Huh. OK. But did anyone die that you know of?
Souder: Uh, presumably so, thousands have died, the only question is, you said "overdose" --that isn't even most of the deaths related to prescription drug or to cocaine or heroin -- there's a whole range of drug crimes and so on. I don't know the number of overdose. Marijuana is often managed ah, with meth -- no drug user is a single drug user so marijuana is often in the mix of most deaths so it would be very hard to separate what's what. A marijuana user is very seldom just a casual marijuana user, ah, except in the early stages, they're often gonna polydrug.
Carlson: Yeah. OK. I'm not endorsing drugs, but I know a lot of casual marijuana users, so, that's wrong.
But I appreciate you coming on. Thanks a lot, Congressman.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1783191/posts?page=6#6
U.S. effort to kill coca failing in Colombia
-snip-
According to the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, U.S. retail cocaine prices fell from above $200 to below $140 per gram and purity rose from 60 percent to above 70 percent between July 2003 and October 2006. Such statistics suggest that the drug's availability improved at a time when spraying nearly tripled in Colombia, which provides more than 90 percent of cocaine entering the United States, according to the State Department's 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
Coca cultivation has increased, despite Plan Colombia's initial goal of cutting the country's coca crop in half. The most recent data released by the State Department show that more land was cultivated with coca in 2005 -- 144,000 acres -- than when the effort began in 2000.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/11/MNGGVOJC151.DTL
This lost opportunity also applies to taxes. But try and explain that to the space cadets who hang out on any of the NASA threads. They took me off the ping list because I brought this up too many times for their rah rah NASA little minds - I think it made their heads hurt.
Ps Mencken is one of my favorite authors. I remember when he died.
Value destruction by common criminals is dwarfed by the trillion dollars of value destruction by parasitical elite fraudsters.
Wealth transfer by government (otherwise know as plunder and squander) is one of the greatest evils of our time - far dwarfing "terrorism"
If the ADs are contracted out, dictate that if they intentionally misrepresent the facts they must refund all money paid to them.
If a government official conspires to produce ADs with tax dollars that misrepresent the facts, they should also be held civilly liable for the tax dollars they waste.
Criminal fraud charges should also be applicable in many cases.
Create and enforce those laws, and there would be a lot less tax dollars spent on such things.
I agree with this. But if you look around, how many people are even aware of the evil of "wealth transfer by government"? If they are aware of wealth transfer, how many think it is good and just? Probably a depressingly large number. Even on this supposedly "conservative" forum, we've got people who want to elect liberals because they think those liberals will keep them safe from terrorists.
Sadly true. Look at GWB, hot for the "war on terror" but cold on protecting us from an onging Mexican invasion.
2158 murders are committed annually by illegal aliens so about 10,000 Americans killed by illegals since 9/11 vs the 3,000 killed by terrorists. Which is the bigger threat? Terrorists did a hit on the economy on 9/11 costing billions, but we recovered. The illegal invasion is costing hundreds of billions in lost jobs, and stolen government "services" (like education for the ninos) health care etc. The health care support infrastruction is failing because of illegal immigrants clogging the hospitals (and no they don't pay). Something that our current King George II doesn't seem to worry about.
Wealth transfer by government (otherwise know as plunder and squander) is one of the greatest evils of our time - far dwarfing "terrorism"
The transferred wealth ahh, wealth extorted from value production is bad enough, but then it's used to fuel value destruction.
Call me an optimist but, it's mind boggling to think of economic and technology boom that will skyrocket as a result of the spotlight of honesty exposing their frauds and renders parasitical elites obsolete . I mean, right now civilization is at the knee curve of exponentially advancing technology. And that's despite the ball-and-chain parasitical elites have burdened people and civilization with. Throw off the yolk and, KABOOM!!
Look back in time to see how the progress of technology has been used to dispel ignorance and defend against tyrannical rule and oppression. The trouble is, parasitical elites have used the technology advances in evermore devious and daring ways to undermine the value producers and value creators of the world. However, advancing information and communication technologies have increasingly freed more people. From the printing press to radio to satellites to fax machines and to the Internet. The borderless Internet sans boundaries that limit ideas, where free competition rules and propaganda is exposed, is the final frontier for the war of two worlds.
Value producers
versus
Value destroyers
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