Posted on 01/15/2003 7:24:33 AM PST by MrLeRoy
If most parents knew there was a federally funded organization lying to their children about the effects of drug use, they would likely be appalled and seek to have the organization's funding removed. Yet the frightening truth is that such a group exists, operating under the family-friendly monicker, Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA). In its newest line of Public Service Announcements (PSAs), the group equates marijuana use with wrongful death, rape and even murder...crimes that sensible people realize marijuana usage alone would never lead to. Last year, the American public was misled into thinking that every joint they smoked contributed to international terrorism, and recently that using marijuana will almost certainly result in acts of domestic violence.
Lies. The "anti-drug."
PDFA's well-intentioned but inaccurate PSAs feature a variety of scenarios, each ending with someone dying, being raped or going to jail. In reality, only the latter is a likely consequence of using marijuana.
In one of the ads, two male teenagers smoke pot in what appears to be the home office of one of their fathers, and, as the two adolescents continue to smoke, they stumble across a handgun. To see if it's loaded, one of the teens promptly picks up the gun and shoots directly at his friend. The gun is, of course, loaded, and the guilty teen, totally under the "control" of the marijuana, never thought to check for bullets or point the gun anywhere except directly at his friend. The entire grisly scene is followed by the words "Marijuana: Harmless?"
If this television spot sounds totally implausible, even ridiculous, that's because it is, and the others are just like it. The ad would be better-aimed at parents who fail to lock up their handguns. The fact remains that people don't test to see if a gun is loaded by blindly pointing it at their best friend and squeezing the trigger, stoned or not. The ad's message is not simply that marijuana distorts perception and judgement, it is that if you smoke weed, you will be shot or perhaps shoot someone else. This is false.
All of these ads play on what I call a "worst case scenario" fear. The most horrible thing that can happen in any one of the given commercials always does, and, without fail, marijuana is to blame.
Another of the PSAs features a car full of young people at a fast food window smoking marijuana. The teens get their food, and as they are pulling out, a child on a bicycle pulls out in front of them from behind a corner, totally getting run over by the "negligent" driver in the process. If only the teens hadn't been smoking marijuana, the commercial implies, perhaps the little girl on the bicycle would have lived.
The fact that this child appears to be younger than 5 years old and riding a bike without parental supervision along a busy commercial fairway is never addressed. Again, the ad would better serve parents who let their children play in the street unattended. Anyone, regardless of age, who darts in front of a moving car is likely to get run over. Marijuana has nothing to do with it.
Perhaps most intriguing is the spot in which two teens, a male and a female, smoke marijuana at a party. After smoking a few bowls of weed from a pipe, the female begins to look comatose, and her male companion proceeds to rape her in front of all the people at the party. Not surprisingly, no one comes to her aid, and viewers are again asked "Marijuana: Harmless?"
Here, marijuana use leads to an impromptu rape at this poor woman's expense. Mark Tutssel, vice-chairman of Leo Burnett USA, PDFA's ad agency, said in a press release that the company's PSAs dealt with "everyday occurences." I would venture to say that none of the aforementioned scenarios occurs every day, if at all, and PDFA, which prides itself on truth, is willfully misleading the American public about the "dangers" of marijuana.
Here are the facts. The Marijuana Policy Project's Web site, www.mpp.org, lists that 11 of our 50 states consider marijuana to be a medicine and have decriminalized it. Of these states, California alone saves $100 million each year in reduced arrests, according to the group's Web site. Imagine what the extra money could do for California and how much might be saved if marijuana was legalized outright.
In fact, the Web site states that the government has been supplying American citizens with medicinal marijuana for more than 20 years. There is even a pill form of the drug, called Marinol, available only by prescription. So is marijuana the scourge of society and the corruptor of youth? The U.S. government doesn't seem to think so.
When dealing with tough issues such as drug use, one must take the good with the bad. Marijuana can arguably be said to cure more than it causes, and its medicinal qualities cannot be ignored. Could there be negative effects of using marijuana? Sure, but to think that smoking pot will almost certainly lead to accidental death, rape, or murder, you would have to be, well, high.
Kinda of like socialist liberal democRATS in America?
I think that you could have all 40 additional therapeutic compounds, a pizza and a movie for that kind of money ;)
1. Kids run down little girl on bike = stoned youth in car peeling away from the curb and does a hit and run on old man crossing the street.
2. Girl raped at party = girl, nearly comatose on sofa after a couple of tokes being groped by stoned friend.
3. Friend, in stoned haze, shoots friend = stoned hallucinating guy kills girl that is the love of his life.
You would think the people creating these ads would show a little more creativity, but lo, they have to go back to a thoroughly discredited propaganda piece from the 20's (30's? Can't quite remember. Saw it in university and well, umm...). It's one thing when a government engages in stupid and ultimately destructive policies. It's another altogether when they have to resort to insulting the nation's intelligence (even though they probably believe this rot) to do so.
That's the point. But, unlike a liberal, I'm not going to bi*ch about the evil drug companies. The problem lies with the Federal Government.
A Freudian slip, I'm sure :o)
Hillarious. Be that as it may, it seems our Drug Czar is still taking all his cues from the Ghost of Anslinger. Next stop, blaming the plague on Jazz musicians. Or in todays paralance Pop/Rap/Rock stars.
Anyone got a copy of "Devil's Harvest"? I think I'll try and collect the whole set.
See post 24.
I know---I was trying to map each commercial to each scene but this brother's already done it for me. I thought each scenario sounded familiar.
For a complete set, they've got to update the evil boogeyman black jazz pianist corrupting all the young, impressionable white women with his hot jazz. Maybe the jazz musician could translate to some thug rapper.
I can see the problem---they'd have no trouble with the movie, but you'd have bitten a hole through your cheek trying not to laugh out loud.
I bought the vid on the cheap from Newbury Comics, an alterno record store up here. I used it as a booby prize for a wine tasting party my wife and I threw, but the winner forgot to take it home, and now it's part of my personal stash.
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