The NH House of Representatives just passed a marijuana decriminalization bill and it looks like drug warrior Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) inadvertently played a potent role in pushing the reforms through.

Coverage from the Associated Press indicates that the obscenely harsh aid elimination penalty of the Higher Education Act, which Souder authored, played a part in persuading NH legislators to put pot policy in perspective:

Supporters argued current law costs youths who experiment with the drug all chances at receiving financial aid to attend college. They said it wasn't fair to penalize them for life for a youthful mistake.

Windham Republican Jason Bedrick said he doesn't advocate using marijuana, but that wasn't the issue.

"The question is whether a teenager making a stupid decision should face a year in prison and loss of all funding for college," said Bedrick.

Bedrick called the state's penalties "overly harsh."

"What societal interest is served by giving them a record for life?" he said. Instead of harsh penalties, society should emphasize education, he said.

Souder's brainless attempt to fight drug use by keeping students out of school has already galvanized the reform movement, inspiring the formation of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and uniting the largest coalition of public interest groups ever to oppose a federal drug law.

Souder's heartless and counterproductive law has become emblematic of the drug war's tendency to throw the baby out with bathwater, destroying young lives in the name of protecting youth. It has opened doors to the reform movement by confirming our worst stereotypes of blind drug war demagoguery and motivating public health, education, and treatment organizations to join our ranks in calling for a return to sanity.

Today his law was used effectively in a state legislature as an argument for reforming marijuana laws. Whether or not the bill passes the senate and becomes law remains to be seen, but a lesson has been learned nonetheless: the drug warriors' own cruelty has become our most viable weapon in the fight for reform. We will always gain more ground arguing that the law is harmful than by claiming the drug is safe.

Finally, before celebrating Mark Souder's gift to the reform movement, let's not forget that 200,000 students paid a terrible price so that we can now more vividly depict the fury and callousness of our drug war leaders.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Amanda Brooke Shaffer is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. Her bio is in our "staff" section at http://stopthedrugwar.org/about/staff Is the American public getting tired of government lies and exaggerations about drugs? If the ballooning number of anti-drug parodies on the Internet is any measure, it sure seems so. The emergence of YouTube.com and other popular video websites has enabled and emboldened Internet users to express their opinions about the often criticized, government-sponsored anti-drug PSAs through video clips and commentary. The public is busy at work making innovative and bold statements. I attempted to view as many anti-drug parody ads as possible; however, I didn’t expect the search engine on YouTube.com to turn up such a high volume of videos. It soon became quite obvious that the trend of the parody ads is to expose the ridiculousness of the claims made in the anti-drug PSAs. The clip that follows is an anti-drug PSA sponsored by the government. The second is the parody of it produced by an Internet user. http://youtube.com/watch?v=jgJdVEoVbgg, http://youtube.com/watch?v=m6FL0pmJeaE&feature=related Clearly the second clip flat out mocks the first one by completely contradicting the message the government is portraying. Below each video clip is space for viewers to comment. One of the numerous remarks about these two ads resembled something like this, “If I smoke then my dog will talk to me??? Puff, Puff, Pass!” This was just the tip of the iceberg of what users had to say. A study was done on a variety of ads including the above mentioned “dog” ad to determine the effects on the youth of America. Guess what? The results showed an increase of marijuana use in girls aged 12-13 through making drug use by peers appear to be more familiar and acceptable. See: http://newrecovery.blogspot.com/2007/02/12-billion-later-national-youth-anti.html and http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06818.pdf and http://www.nida.nih.gov/DESPR/Westat/Westat502/ExecSummary502.html Why are we spending our dwindling tax resources on commercials that send the wrong message to their target audience? The anti-drug media campaign creates artistic and abstract ads that are unrealistic, when all Americans really need, and want to see, are commercials that tell them the truth. Another approach the campaign employs is using upbeat and positive messages to attempt to deter youths from using drugs. It is known as “What’s Your Anti-Drug?” This parody clip (http://youtube.com/watch?v=eDXxA0hMo1I) twists the government’s message to expose the fallacy of the marijuana as a “gateway” to harder drugs myth through the line, “Weed is my anti-drug.” It seems that no matter how hard the government works to embed the gateway myth into the public consciousness, those pesky studies that disprove a causal link to using harder drugs keep informing the public of the truth. Many clips I viewed expressed the notion that weed prevented them from using other drugs by satisfying their desires and curiosities. I felt one parody rose above the rest. Not only was it the most viewed parody anti-drug ad I came across, but it had me and all my friends rolling on the floor with laughter. It is an ad featuring our Commander in Chief, President Bush. Bush, known for his binge drinking and cocaine use by a large majority of Americans, is an ideal person to exemplify the long-term consequences of drug abuse. This ad has the right stuff -- a notable figure and a realistic message that is powerful and clear to the viewer. Check it out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eGgTLMC9GXg. I think it is quite obvious why Americans are taking precious time out of their daily lives to speak out. Simply put, the extremely expensive anti-drug media campaign employed by the government over the last two decades is laughable, and government-funded research continues to conclude that these ads are ineffective at preventing and reducing drug use among youths. Yet, despite the increasing mounds of evidence proving the campaign’s ineffectiveness, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) disputes the critical conclusions of these studies and has the audacity to ask the government for even more money. The good thing is that the ease of accessing these reports, thanks to the Internet, is making it progressively harder for ONDCP to ignore the facts and hide them from the American people. You see, the D.A.R.E. generation has had enough of the lies and distortions, and it’s fighting back with truth and sense.