Winter break was going swimmingly until my mother picked the
middle of a perfectly good day to teach me a life lesson by
wrapping herself in a blanket. She took it in her hands, licked an
edge of it, and then rolled herself up, all while plaintively
asking me, “What am I? What am I?” When she saw that I
was stumped speechless, she gave the answer: “A joint!”
I learned my lesson about the evils of marijuana, and we went out
for two heaping bowls of chocolate chip ice cream. Mmm!
OK, so that didn’t actually happen. But that’s
apparently the sort of parent-child interaction that the Office of
National Drug Control Policy has in mind in order to prevent
marijuana usage because I did see an ad on television last week
that depicted the above scenario playing out almost exactly ““
just without the ice cream.
Evidently, the discourse about marijuana in this country has
been reduced to playing charades with home decor items. Keep that
in mind the next time your father pantomimes taking a huge hit from
the living room floor lamp.
We’ve all seen the ads that the ONDCP puts out. There are
versions aimed at parents like the one above and also variants
geared toward teenagers. The tag lines always point out helpful,
totally legal alternatives to drugs, such as “Friendship: My
Anti-Drug,” “Responsibility: My Anti-Drug,” or
“Bolt-Action Assault Rifles: My Anti-Drug.”
My favorite of these shows a sad grandmother alone in her
apartment. The announcer says, “Just tell your grandma you
blew off dinner plans you made with her because you were stoned.
She’ll understand.”
I must not understand much about marijuana because it
doesn’t seem to me that a stoned teenager would blow off
dinner plans of any sort. Not only would he most likely show up at
Grandma’s, but he’d probably bring all his buddies and
eat every scrap of food in the apartment while Grandma scurried
into the bedroom to avoid errant Hacky Sacks.
I wonder if we’ll see an extra-strong flurry of
antimarijuana ads in this new year due to all the recent news
stories with a promarijuana tilt.
First came word in October that the FBI was thinking about
relaxing its hiring rules regarding past marijuana usage, probably
realizing that they had been ruling out almost everyone who has
ever attended college or been within 50 feet of a Phish or Snoop
Dogg concert.
Then, in November, voters in Denver approved an initiative
decriminalizing adults 21 and over if they are found in possession
of less than an ounce of marijuana, giving new meaning to the term
“Mile High City” (royalty fees for that joke go to the
headline writers at the Rocky Mountain News).
Finally, on Jan. 4, Rhode Island joined California and nine
other states in legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. The
Rhode Island Legislature did not explain their decision in the face
of the Supreme Court’s June ruling that medical marijuana
users could still be prosecuted under federal law except to say,
“We put up a Jimi Hendrix poster and it looks awesome with a
black light.”
In light of all these developments, it must be getting
continually harder for the ONDCP to convince teenagers that smoking
pot is irrevocably harmful.
After all, scientific data continues to be mixed, and the
conspicuous lack of support for do-it-yourself medical
methamphetamines or medical angel dust shows to anybody with five
functioning brain cells that marijuana is not in the same league as
more hardcore drugs.
There are no undisputed studies showing that marijuana actually
acts as the famed “gateway drug” to worse substances
like our high school health teachers would have us believe; any
evidence touted by the government in favor of the gateway theory is
countered by a study saying that there aren’t any numbers to
back this claim up.
Most people know these things, which is why a December
Government Accountability Office report found that, despite the
claims of the drug czars and the ONDCP, there is no data to suggest
that the U.S. government is actually doing anything more effective
with the $40 billion a year spent on the drug war than flushing it
down a toilet. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has also found
more specifically that the youth advertising campaign, which costs
$150 million yearly, has had no effect on teens’ views about
marijuana.
Whether you think marijuana should be legalized and whether you
think teens should be publicly discouraged from using it,
it’s relatively apparent that the condescending,
counter-effective and downright stupid antimarijuana ads in the
media should be stopped or have their message changed.
There is far too much information out there right now about
marijuana for idiotic TV ads to change teens’ minds. Seeing
perky mothers wrapping themselves in blankets just doesn’t
seem as convincing to me as more credible information that teens
can easily find from other sources. Plus, their parents are
starting to give themselves rug burns. Talk about a big
charade.
Four words … sounds like … Shme-mail Dan at
datherton@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.