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Anti Drug Commercials

The Super Bowl has become synonymous with exorbitantly expensive and consistently funny television commercials that often attract as many viewers as the championship football game itself. This year, as approximately 40 percent of U.S. households geared up for game day, Drug Czar John Walters and his Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) prepared to make use of the event's enormous viewing audience in order to disseminate a damaging and discriminatory message: if you use illegal drugs, you support terrorism. Touted as being the biggest single-event government advertising buy in U.S. history, this $3.2 million purchase of two thirty-second spots was only the kickoff of a protracted and expensive ad campaign that includes a barrage of print ads in the nation's newspapers.

Ostensibly, this campaign intends to somehow decrease drug use by attempting to shame Americans who use illegal drugs into deeming their actions unpatriotic and terrorist-supporting. On closer examination, however, the intent of the ads may be an appeal, not to drug users (whose criminalized status makes them less likely to feel compelled to please the government anyway), but to already fervently "patriotic" Americans who are incited to regard drug users as supporters of terrorism.

Yet the ONDCP seems to be oblivious to the fact that it isn't users of drugs who are supporting terrorism but the ONDCP's own prohibition policies. By its very nature, drug prohibition creates inflated prices and a black market through which billions of untraceable dollars flow. One need only look at the failure of alcohol prohibition--which created domestic terrorists like Al Capone--to see that it isn't alcohol and other drugs but, rather, prohibition that feeds the coffers of terrorism. And as proof that terrorists don't profit through the black market when a drug is legal, one need only note that beer-maker Anheuser-Busch purchased ten pricey Super Bowl ad spaces--far more than any other advertiser. Alcohol is a drug, yet legal profits from its sale enrich U.S. companies, not terrorists.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the distorted message of the ONDCP ads is the fact that the drug czar seems to have no qualms selling his agenda to the public. Generally, messages from the ONDCP are at least euphemized as public service announcements, but this latest propaganda is a blatant advertising campaign. As years of carefully monitored mass media advertising have proved, the viewing public can be sold ideas--such as brand loyalty--just as easily as products. So, while these Super Bowl ads erroneously "educate" the public about drug/terrorist connections, they also clarify who Washington sees as the real enemy in this domestic war. And the idea for sale now is a further demonization of drugs and their users. Instead of brand loyalty, we're encouraged to pledge our minds to government policy. And in light of the failing war on some drugs, Walters desperately needs loyal converts to buy into his crusade.

Another troubling aspect to the ONDCP's multimillion-dollar ad campaign is the magnitude of the money which could be better spent. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the average cost for a full year of methadone maintenance treatment is approximately $4,700 per patient. That means, for the cost of the two Super Bowl ads, the government could have treated 680 heroin addicts.

The recent detection and subsequent dismantling of the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Influence again raises the question of just how far the government is willing to go in order to ensure that the media, and hence the general public, loyally support its policies. As Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz aptly stated, "This is a battle for minds." Many Pentagon officials have admitted that deliberate misinformation is common in war situations. Is it too much of a stretch to assume that tactics employed in the war abroad are also put to use in the war against drug users? The mere existence of an office whose sole purpose is to manipulate public opinion in support of a particular program--in essence to choose what "truths" will be propagated--makes one suspect the validity of any government information campaign, in particular regarding a drug war that is so highly militarized in nature.

The war on terrorism continues to enjoy widespread popularity (assuming those high-percentage polls aren't dishonest "strategic information"), and one can only assume Walters wants a piece of the approval-rating pie. By piggybacking his floundering war onto the currently popular crusade, perhaps he's hoping both will float across the public opinion polls together. The only problem is that this campaign is likely to do more harm to his cause than anything.

First of all, far too many people have gone on to make the further connection that foreign oil profits also support terrorist organizations. But Walters isn't depicting drivers of sports utility vehicles as supporters of terrorism because, when the majority is complicit, any possible criminal connections seem to deftly disappear. Instead, the finger is pointed at marginalized groups: drug users in general and teens in particular. The ad campaign's accusations are discredited when one realizes that Washington isn't concerned about personal consumer choices that could support terrorists; if it were, it would be discouraging dependence on foreign oil. Instead, Washington is all too concerned about personal consumption choices over which the government, due to its own prohibition policies, has little or no control.

Secondly, with close-up pictures of teens essentially confessing to terrorist acts, this ad campaign makes explicit who the targeted "enemies" have been all along. As many opponents of the war on drugs have been clarifying for years, this "war" is not on plants and pills but on the people who use them. Due to drug users' marginalized status, drugs are a convenient scapegoat for the ills of society. But on a personal level, the public is more compassionate toward drug users, supporting treatment programs over jail time for many offenses. The war rhetoric has become so familiar, and depiction of evil drugs so pervasive, that many people have forgotten this war is being waged on humans--approximately a half-million of whom are currently rotting away in prison. This latest propaganda, however, so boldly demonizes users instead of drugs that the drug warriors might discover they have disclosed more than mainstream America wanted to know about the true targets in this cultural conflict.

Americans have used drugs for centuries and will continue to do so. By restricting individual choice in the matter of what one consumes to alter one's consciousness, our national drug policy stomps on the exact freedoms it claims to protect. Masquerading as guilt-trip patriotism, these ads aren't meant to curb drug use; they are strategic propaganda meant to influence how Americans view drug users. In deferring the drug issue to a terrorist/patriot dichotomy, the ONDCP's ad campaign encourages discrimination against an already marginalized group while doing nothing to stop the flow of money to terrorist organizations. Rather than paint drug use as unpatriotic, the U.S. government should recognize that the freedom to control one's own consciousness is a fundamental human right--one that a rational and sustainable drug policy would acknowledge and respect.

Zara Gelsey is the director of communications for the Alchemind Society: The International Association for Cognitive Liberty.

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