US Govt. Ad campaign links casual drug use to terrorism

Sunday February 16, 2003 23:41

by neogeo

This artice from the Media Awareness Project (www.mapinc.org) sees the US government once again exploiting 11/09/01 for its own ends by attempting to associate the casual soft drug user with sponsoring terrorism.

ADS LINK DRUG USE TO GLOBAL TERRORISM

WASHINGTON - "Timmy," a fresh-faced teen-ager, stares from the TV screen and says matter-of-factly: "I killed grandmas. I killed daughters. I killed firemen. I killed policemen."

Then he adds, casually: "Technically, I didn't kill these people. I just kind of helped."

A message at the bottom of the screen carries an ominous warning: "Where do terrorists get their money? If you buy drugs, some of it may come from you."

Timmy and several other teens are the stars of a powerful, provocative advertising campaign from the White House drug control office that uses more than $10 million in taxpayer funds to link the war on drugs to the war on terrorism.

It's in-your-face television, impossible to ignore. Some anti-drug activists, such as Peggy Sapp of Miami, praise the ads for "finally forcing kids to face the consequences of their actions."

Critics of the drug war deride them as slick, packaged fear-mongering.

"Blaming nonviolent kids for terrorism is like blaming beer drinkers for Al Capone's murders," said Ethan Nadelman, director of Drug Policy Alliance, which wants to decriminalize most drug use.

The campaign began with $3.5 million high-impact spots during the Super Bowl. The ads will continue at least until June. The spots with Timmy and others will air nationwide in the next few weeks.

The goal: shame casual drug users by telling them that drugs help pay for terrorism elsewhere, especially in Colombia, and maybe in the United States.

The new White House drug czar, John Walters, said in a recent interview that they appeal to "young people's idealism" by putting drug use and its impact in a wider, global context. Past public service ads focused on the harmful effects of drugs on users and their families.

"We have many messages, but this is more powerful than anything else right now," Walters said. "There's a heightened awareness since Sept. 11 that there are real enemies and harms that can be brought home. And we were careful to check all the facts."

The connection between drug trafficking and terrorism is at the heart of arguments surrounding the ads. Each line of dialogue in the ads is explained on the drug control office's Web site ( theantidrug.com ) by real-world examples from Mexico and Colombia.

The office cites a State Department report from October that found that 12 of 28 terrorist groups traffic in drugs.

A strong link is relatively easy to demonstrate in Colombia, where guerrillas and paramilitaries traffic in drugs while killing officials, police and civilians. Colombian and Mexican officials have praised the ads, saying it is U.S. demand for drugs that leads to carnage in their countries.

The language used in the ads suggests a direct link between drug trafficking and the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked New York's World Trade Center last Sept. 11. But the closest documented connection between al Qaeda and drug trafficking is that the former Taliban regime that sheltered Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan profited from that country's long-standing opium trade -- but also took steps to halt it.

Investigators have also found that al Qaeda made millions of dollars from the diamond trade, which fuels vicious civil wars using child soldiers in Africa, and many of terrorist leader bin Laden's operations were funded by wealthy Saudi families that rely on oil revenue.

Other critics such as Nadelman say the ads bypass the reality of teens' drug use.

"Only a small minority use heroin or cocaine -- most use marijuana or Ecstasy, and terrorists have not been involved in that stuff," Nadelman said.

But Walters said such criticism is off base or misses the point.

"The links between drugs and terrorism are very real," he said. "These ads have gotten high marks, even from people who say they were skeptical of prevention campaigns in the past.

"There's really one outcome that matters. Do the ads contribute to a drop in drug use? That's all I care about and all the president cares about."