UNIVERSITY WIRE
For my New Year’s resolution, I resolve to call out the
media on propagandistic malarkey whenever I see it. And so, I
present the following for your consideration.
Something has really stuck in my craw since the Super Bowl last
year. A very disgusting something I call “Patriotism ““
the Anti-Drug.” This is the newest hook of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America ““ buy drugs, and you support terrorism. Inevitably,
this produced a backlash from progressive watchdogs.
The latest headliner of the ONDCP’s parade of propaganda
is a spot featuring the word “might” as the moral
loophole. Probably an answer to the skeptics arguing that drugs
have no direct link to terrorism, “Might” features a
middle-class businessman saying that it’s OK to buy or use
drugs because it only might finance terrorism. He is in turn
barraged by his colleagues with examples where even
“might” is presumably not OK. It’s OK that it
might slaughter families in Colombia? It’s OK that it might
spawn drive-by shootings in ghetto neighborhoods? And so forth.
What is so offensive about this fallacy is that drugs alone do
not finance terrorism, same as that they do not in and of
themselves cause domestic violence or claim responsibility for gang
shootings. In addition, the audience for these commercials is
mostly teens — so the inference is that teenagers single-handedly
finance terrorism when they buy a dime bag.
Terrorism is financed by drugs ““ not just their pursuit,
but also their eradication. An example is that about two years ago,
the United States financed the same Taliban it now condemns to
destroy heroin and opium crops in Afghanistan. Drugs themselves do
not support terrorism; their illegality does. The lawlessness in
countries where trafficking prospers is not just a cause of drugs
alone, but decentralized, weak governments whose people are
desperate for money. And the illegal drug trade provides it. This
is hardly a thing that the war on drugs can fix, but perhaps
decriminalization can.
It is not fair to demonize drug users alone for terrorism, if at
all. If the story of America’s youth getting high in the
basement is comparable to FARC planning another guerrilla invasion,
then it is comparable to say that the man proposing to his wife
with a diamond ring is washing her with the blood of innocent
people or that someone who heats his home or fuels his car is
helping to blow up an embassy. Because guess what ““ the
terrorists are also financed by oil and diamonds, but these
interests are harder to vilify because they have a
“legitimate” history, whereas drug use does not.
Don’t misconstrue my words. I am not supporting drug abuse
by any means. But I have come to view drug abuse as not just a mere
matter of broken morality. I see it as a phenomenon that has its
roots in socioeconomic failure and in biology. I believe drug users
should be treated instead of imprisoned. To link the failing drug
war to the war on terrorism has the disastrous effect of making
traitors out of 14 million Americans. Is that really a war on
terrorism, or misdirection?