More "War on Drugs" waste
Today, USA Today ran a story entitled, "Anti-drug advertising campaign a failure, GAO report says," which exposes the fact that the ad campaign actually INCREASES the chances of teen drug use. On the opposing page, they ran one of the very same ads. How apropos!Here's a quote from that USA Today story:
A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush's budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year.
Our tax dollars at work. If I'm going to fund propaganda, could it at least be effective propaganda? There is a drug problem in this country. Criminalization and bad advertising don't seem to be working. Some fresh approaches, please. Even if some new way doesn't work, I'd rather fail in new ways than fail in the same way we've been failing for decades. Then we'd at least be learning something. As it is, there are just a lot of people in jail who don't have to be, a lot of tax revenue the government isn't getting, and a lot of addicts who aren't getting treatment. The only people who win under the current system are the prison industry, the drug kingpins, and the politicians who exploit this "war" for political purposes. Not exactly the folks I'd like to be subsidizing.
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