Campaign of Lies

by Lady Liberty
03/04/2003

In the decades since the institution of the so-called War on Drugs, there's been little success by authorities in stemming the flow of illicit substances into the country and onto the streets. Some pinned their hopes to an anti-drug educational campaign geared to minimize any demand for drugs. That, too, has been unsuccessful.

The lack of success in the War on Drugs from an authoritarian standpoint is easily explained when you realize that the profits are just too great. Despite the threat of significant jail time, the tempting lure of serious cash keeps the smugglers and dealers in business, and provides for ready and willing replacements for those few who are taken of the streets by police. This is one of the most compelling arguments offered by those in favor of decriminalizing illegal drugs. It is also, however, the topic for another essay.

As an aside, arresting the end user and imposing draconian sentences have absolutely no effect on the dealers, either, and little effect on other users. What it does affect is the families of people who may have been perfectly functional and contributing members of society, but who occasionally chose a recreational activity frowned upon by the powers that be. But this, too, is another essay in the making.

It is the other half of the War on Drugs - the anti-drug educational campaigns - that has drawn my attention recently. The current government campaign involves the claim that anyone who purchases drugs is helping to fund terrorism. Of course, that's almost entirely untrue. And, in a nutshell, there's the reason for the ongoing failure of the educational campaigns: they're lies. And kids know when they're being lied to.

Most marijuana comes from Mexico or illicit fields in the United States. Mexican nationals, to the best of my knowledge, are not commonly known as terrorists in the US or anywhere else. Cocaine comes almost entirely from a few South American countries. Now while the drug cartels terrorize people on a local scale and cause their governments a host of problems, they, too, are not terrorists as are implicated in the commercials.

Heroin comes from opium poppies, and Afghanistan used to grow fields of the flowers for just that purpose. Ironically, the US cut a deal with the Taliban to support a takeover of the existing government in exchange for the destruction of the poppy fields. The Taliban took over, aided and abetted by the US. The poppy fields, of course, weren't much affected by any of this because the Taliban needed money just like the former government needed money. The Taliban is certainly tied closely to terrorism, but it was the US government that worked with them originally, not the US drug user.

A few years ago, there was a series of anti-drug commercials that were meant to scare the pants off kids considering giving cocaine a try. A young man tries coke "just one time" and falls over dead, the victim of a cocaine-induced heart attack. Oooooh, scary! The problem is that we all know someone who has used cocaine and is still alive and kicking, and almost none of us know anyone who keeled over after snorting a single line. Even though a heart attack is possible, it's an extremely remote possibility. By using such an extraordinarily unlikely consequence as an example, it looked to kids like the grown-ups were lying.

Calling marijuana a "gateway drug" is based solely on a study that made such inappropriate use of statistical analysis that it was actually used in my university statistics classes as an example of how not to do an analysis. The study consisted of the survey of a number of heroin users. Each was asked, "Have you ever used marijuana?" An overwhelming majority answered in the affirmative, and the researchers said this "proved" that smoking pot led to the use of harder drugs. Now watch while I use identical methodology to "prove" going to church causes murder: Ask every man and woman on death row, "Have you ever been to church?" What do you think the majority will say? And do you, for a second, think having attended a church service made them do what they did? Kids are young, not stupid.

Of course, everything we say about marijuana to kids is colored by the fact that we say it with a gin and tonic in our hand. And folks, there's absolutely no difference between pot and alcohol. Well, there's one. Too much alcohol can kill you, while the there has never been a single instance of a marijuana overdose. Oh, yes. Alcohol can be physically addictive. Marijuana isn't (although for some people there may be a psychological dependence developed). So now we're not only liars, we're the worst kind of hypocrite. And kids know it.

Do I believe that drug use is harmless? No. I don't think kids, whose brains and bodies are still developing, should use any kind of drug. So what would I tell kids to educate them about drug use? The truth.

LSD won't make you think you can fly and jump off a high-rise building to prove it. It can, however, damage your chromosomes, meaning you'll give birth someday to little monsters. Might not happen. But it might. That's the truth, it's a scary truth, and there's no way to tell if it'll happen to you or not until it does.

Cocaine almost certainly won't give you a heart attack. It will, however, put a hole in your wallet big enough to drive a truck through. The high doesn't last long, so you'll be forced to get more and more. And if you keep it up, your nose will have a hole in the septum almost as big as the one in your wallet, something which those of the opposite sex will not find attractive. If you want to spend a lot of money, why not spend it on something that'll last longer than twenty minutes, like hip huggers which will last at least another half an hour before they're out of style again.

Heroin is wildly addictive, horribly expensive, and something about which no lies need be told to describe how truly dangerous it is. Purity differs so much from purchase to purchase that a quantity that did little for you last time will kill you between one heartbeat and the next this time. Dirty needles cause nasty infections; shared needles can cause fatal infections like AIDS. Why pretend buying heroin will fry your brain like an egg when the reality is so much more graphic and frankly even worse?

Crystal meth - a powerful form of speed - is, according to news reports, gaining in popularity. The manufacture of it is dangerous (the chemicals are highly volatile), but the profits are good enough that some people will risk it. Before you stick any of it up your nose or in your pipe, though, run out and check under Mom's sink. Grab a bottle of ammonia, and take a big whiff. After your eyes are done watering and the burning in your nose subsides and you've finished choking, take note of the fact that ammonia is a primary ingredient in methamphetamine. Ouch! Explain how that's a good idea! The fact that it can be addictive and will burn a hole through your nose quicker than cocaine is incidental, and that it's not particularly cheap, either, is a distant third on the scale of worries.

As far as marijuana goes, well, I'm in favor of across the board legalization and won't hide that. It does need to be treated with age restrictions, however. A student can't learn in school while high on pot any more than he can while he's drunk on vodka. And any foreign substance - whether it be alcohol, THC, or nicotine - represents a danger to developing bodies and organs. But again, if these reasons are good enough to justify the age restrictions, why aren't they good enough to tell the kids?

There is, unfortunately, little doubt that the Drug Czar's office will continue as it has in the past, wasting taxpayer dollars on enforcement that will never work, and on educational programs that don't work. After all, DARE (Druge Abuse Resistance Education) programs have now been shown in a number of studies to be worthless (at best; in a few studies, DARE participants were actually more likely to try drugs than students not enrolled in the program), yet the program remains a mainstay in elementary schools everywhere. At least some of us might consider taking matters into our own hands, actually talking to kids, and giving them reason to both stay away from drugs and to respect us all the more by telling them the truth.

I'd like to help out with all that, I really would. I'm afraid I'm too busy right now, though. I need to head over to the local car dealership to trade in my four wheel drive. I saw a commercial last week that said anybody who drives an SUV is supporting terrorism.

Lady Liberty