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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
From: tlknapp@free-market.net
To: activism@free-market.net
Subject: Lies, damn lies and drug war propaganda
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
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----- Featured Action of the Week -----
Third Week of February, 2002
Lies, Damn Lies and Drug War Propaganda
Like millions of other Americans, I sat down a few Sundays ago to watch
the Super Bowl. And, like millions of other Americans, I was probably as
interested in the commercials as I was in the game. Companies
traditionally unveil their newest and most adventurous ads during the
National Football League's championship game, and pay more for that time
slot than they do for any other.
Those who who tuned in hoping to see something new and different in
advertising weren't disappointed. At a reported cost of approximately $1.6
million in taxpayer money each, the Office of National Drug Control Policy
ran two 30-second spots. Both commercials touted a purported connection
between drug use and terrorism, capitalizing on the sense of horror and
revulsion the September 11th attacks inspired in the hearts of the American
people.
New and different? Yes. Original? Not exactly.
These ads didn't spring from a vacuum. They have an identifable
ancestor in the 1964 LBJ campaign commercial depicting a young
girl, frolicking in a field of flowers and then disappearing in the flash
of a nuclear explosion. The strategy is the same: identify your
opponent (Goldwater in 1964, drug users today) with the big
cultural fear of the day (nuclear war in 1964, terrorism today),
whether that identification has merit or not.
They're part of a film tradition that stretches back through Leni
Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" and Sergei Eisenstein's
"Battleship Potemkin," propaganda movies commissioned,
respectively, by the Nazi and Soviet regimes to legitimize the worst
aspects of those regimes.
To put it more bluntly, the ONDCP's ads are a tacit admission of
the failure of the War on Drugs. They're the type of propaganda
produced by people who know they can't make their case on the
facts and who therefore dispense with truth and rely on effect.
The drug warriors know that their previous appeals to specious
claims regarding the dangers of drug use haven't worked. They
know that, sooner or later, they're going to have to explain why thirty years
of nearly unlimited power and a budget that -- as of 2002 -- has grown to
nearly $20 billion per year, haven't produced anything but more drug
warriors and more prisons full of Americans whose "crime" is that they
didn't pay attention when their government tried to tell them what to eat,
drink, smoke, snort or inject.
They know they're losing. And their foolhardy plan of counterattack is to
blame drug users for the terrorism that they themselves have fed for
decades by nurturing an immense black market. A market which attracts a
criminal element to meet the demand for its products and funnels the profits
into other criminal enterprises.
The Super Bowl drug warriors, stuck on their own 10-yard line and their
fourth down, decided to punt -- and the Libertarian Party is running the ball
back down the field for what may very well be a touchdown.
In response to ONDCP's ads, the LP produced its own print ad and is
raising money to run that ad in USA Today and the Washington Times.
They've also made the ad available on their site, and this week, I'd like to
ask you to download it (it's in Adobe PDF format), print it and give it the
widest circulation you can. Post it on the bulletin board in your workplace.
Leave it on the table when you go out to eat. Tack it to telephone poles
when you're out for your evening walk. Leave a copy in the library book you
return.
If you want to donate to the cause of running the ad in major newspapers,
the LP has created a donation link that routes the money directly to that
project, and not to their electoral or other efforts.
The ad is simple in concept and devastating in delivery. Superimposed
across the face of drug czar John Walters is the caption:
"This week I had lunch with the president, testified before Congress, and
helped funnel $40 million in illegal drug money to groups like the Taliban."
The ad continues below with:
"The War on Drugs boosts the price of illegal drugs by as much as 17,000
percent -- funneling huge profits to terrorist organizations. If you support the
War on Drugs or vote for the politicians who wage it, you're helping support
terrorism."
It's an ad that transcends partisan candidacies, state ballot issues and
other political considerations, and gets right to the heart of the matter. It's a
body blow to an agency which has managed to turn a harmless and
ubiquitous weed into the fourth largest cash crop in America, a former soft
drink ingredient into the backbone of several South American economies, a
medicinal poppy into the primary source of income in many central Asian
countries, and all three into cash cows to be milked by the Osama bin
Ladens of the world.
It's the kind of ad that scores touchdowns in the minds of those who see it.
Let's tuck this ball under our arm and run into the drug warriors' end zone.
Even if you don't make a habit of forwarding Action of the Week to friends, I
hope you'll send this one to everyone on your mailing list.
[Note: Free-Market.Net is a non-partisan, educational project of the Henry
Hazlitt Foundation. We are not affiliated with, nor do we endorse, any
political party or candidate for office.]
The Libertarian Party's ad on drugs and terrorism (Adobe PDF format):
http://www.free-market.net/rd/196609524.html
The Libertarian Party's description of the ad and appeal for funding to run it:
http://www.free-market.net/rd/198291893.html
The Office of National Drug Control Policy's "Drugs and Terror" ads:
http://www1.theantidrug.com/drugs_terror/ads.html
Action of the Week archive:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-archives/activism/maillist.html
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..................................
Thomas L. Knapp
Managing Editor
Free-Market.Net
http://www.free-market.net/
email: tlknapp@free-market.net
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