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?
"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
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.