Editorial:
Sells
Like
Teen
Spirits
6/4/99
Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, [email protected] A bipartisan effort by two members of Congress to add underage drinking to the list of terribles tackled by the federal government's drug free America advertising campaign ran smack into a sobering reality this week. For all the lofty rhetoric about the welfare of our children and the future of our nation, it turns out that the lucrative, taxpayer-funded, Madison Avenue drug war offensive is really driven by the same thing that drives all of the other lucrative, taxpayer-funded drug war offensives: Money. No sooner had the amendment been introduced by Representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) than the alcohol industry, their bought and paid-for legislators, and the Partnership For a Drug Free America (made up of heavy hitters in the very industries -- advertising and public relations -- that the alcohol industry enriches to the tune of some $3 billion per year) began campaigning against it. For the sake of the children, of course. Depending upon whom you were listening to, the reason that the ads, now airing in 102 cities, should not include mention of alcohol abuse is: 1. Drugs and alcohol are different and should be discussed separately (but note that alcohol kills ten times as many Americans per year as do all illegal drugs combined); 2. Anti-alcohol ads would take precious air time from important anti-"drug" ads, thus blunting the impact of those messages to children (but note that there are already separate ads for marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, inhalants and other substances, and the campaign is large enough that the government predicts that the average school-age child will see an average of four messages per week); 3. Adding anti-alcohol messages will make the drug czar's position "untenable, and reduce his ability to wage the war on drugs" (but the first goal of the administration's drug strategy is to reduce teen use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco); or 4. "The message about drugs is don't ever do it... that is not the message about alcohol" (But studies show that more than twice as many teens are using alcohol as marijuana). To listen to this debate, one would think there is some solid evidence that the anti-drug ad campaign, as currently constituted, actually works. There is not. Or that there is some evidence that the drug war is being waged in the legitimate interests of vulnerable children. There is not. None of which should be surprising to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the competing interests and the real-world impact of our drug policies. In fact, there are precious few drug war strategies that do not carry the stench of profiteering off of the misery of families and the scaling back of constitutional freedoms by opportunistic corporate interests and the politicians they own. Construction firms, the private prison industry, prison guards unions and the various sectors that service the institutions are realizing enormous profits. As in the defense industry, which arms and outfits the US military and which, since President Clinton lifted a long-term ban on their export there, once again has a Latin American market for its high-tech weaponry. The drug testing industry, which stands to benefit directly from new federal subsidies to small and mid-sized businesses that institute testing programs, is also raking it in. All are big political donors. And that partial list doesn't even begin to account for the entities that are profiting from the drug war illegally, including the banking sector which has profited handsomely from the laundering of hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit drug profits. Sandee Burbank of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse says that what our kids -- and the rest of us -- really need is a national consumer-safety campaign involving all substances. That campaign, she says, ought to be based on science, information and common-sense, as opposed to politics and scare-tactics, without regard to a drug's legal status. Aspirin, after all, kills more than a thousand Americans every year, while marijuana has never been directly implicated in a single human death, from its pharmacological effects. In the end, the tempest over adding warnings about underage drinking to the government's boondoggle ad campaign is illustrative of the real engine that is driving our nation's drug policy: Profits. How else to explain the expenditure of hundreds of billions of tax dollars, and the destruction of a generation of poor young men, and the wholesale rollback of individual liberties and the militarization of American law enforcement, balanced against our failure to create a single drug-free high school, much less a drug-free America? The politicians swear they are doing it all for the children, and perhaps in a limited sense they are telling the truth. After all, it's probably pretty cool when your dad raises enough money to win reelection.
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