ONDCP is going to spend 130 million dollars on media in 2008 (total expected budget).

What have they spent a majority of this money on? Ineffectual advertisements to somehow diminish the rates of marijuana consumption in the U.S. The two items in the headline are examples of this ineffectual advertisement, posted to their blog.

Why anyone would spend so much money to combat a chemical that has never induced an overdose, and is of questionable harm, is itself a separate topic. What is not a separate topic is that these media buys, a large portion of the ONDCP budget, have no indication of doing anything outside of funneling money into media stations. That money could be much better used, say, in funding needle exchanges, which save lives daily.

Or, 130 million towards training for the use of and distributing Narcan could probably stop up to half of the yearly overdoses in the United States.

The opposition to Narcan and needle exchanges often decry helping out “junkies.” I have no problem with people opposing the helping out of junkies – but only respect consistency. It is because of a perceived need to “help” the public welfare that drugs are (ostensibly) illegal in the first place. If you’re against Narcan distribution and needle exchanges because they “help junkies,” you’re a hypocrite to support the drug war.

Don’t think the opposite is true though – those of us that support needle exchanges are most often against the drug war, precisely because it fails to protect anyone from anything, and instead punishes people who either 1) don’t really have problems outside of ones created by prohibition, 2) have problems not related to prohibition and need help, not punishment, or 3) are merely around someone in situation #1 or #2.

So while people are outraged by multi-billion dollar bailouts with no consequences or demands to multi-billion dollar financial firms, keep in mind that since 1988, the federal government has been in effect bailing out the media by handing free money over to publish, print, transmit, and send ineffectual propaganda to the American public. All without much outrage by the U.S. public. Recently, that propaganda has focused on marijuana, which has never caused one overdose on record, despite propaganda from another federally-funded agency: the D.E.A. I’m outraged.

Up Next: The D.E.A. and Public Support for Non-Sequitur Arguments Against Marijuana

Posted by Malakkar Vohryzek