Every April 20, marijuana smokers around the country light up for an unofficial holiday celebrating pot that stems from the smoker slang “420.” This year, as the drug war rages in Mexico, the festivities fall against an increasingly violent backdrop.

Some antidrug advocates are using the occasion to jump-start a movement against marijuana not just for health and legal reasons, but on moral grounds. American pot smokers, they say, are unwittingly supporting drug cartels in Mexico.

Aaron Byzak, president of the North Coastal Prevention Coalition, an antidrug group in north San Diego County, says he’ll focus on the Mexican drug war when he addresses 1,000 seventh- to 10th-graders at the group’s annual antidrug festival, also held on April 20, at an amusement park in Vista, Calif. Mr. Byzak will urge the kids to think of Mexico’s drug lords if they’re offered a puff.

“This is a prime opportunity for us to educate them about how every bit of marijuana someone smokes here is giving more power and more money to the drug cartels in Mexico,” he says.

via The Wall Street Journal “The Antidrug Campaign Tries a New Message“

I’m unsure how this works out as a new message. It’s the same message used right after 9-11 that said every bit of marijuana bought directly funded terrorism. Surprisingly, that message and other propaganda from the ONDCP between 1998 and 2004 was ineffective:

In February 2005, Westat, a research company hired by NIDA and funded by The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, reported on its five-year study of the government ad campaigns aimed at dissuading teens from using marijuana, campaigns that cost more than $1 billion between 1998 and 2004. The study found that the ads did not work: “greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others use marijuana.” NIDA leaders and the White House drug office did not release the Westat report for a year and a half. NIDA dated Westat’s report as “delivered” in June 2006. In fact, it was delivered in February 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office, the federal watchdog agency charged with reviewing the study.

via Wikipedia “National Institute on Drug Abuse: Effectiveness of anti-marijuana ad campaigns“

Let’s repeat that for clarity: not only were the results proven ineffective but were so distressing to the ONDCP and NIDA that they delayed releasing the report for a year and a half. And you’re trying to push this on kids again? How stupid do you think they are?

[If there's any message to be taken from the "pot funds Mexican drug gangs" and the "pot funds 9/11 terrorists" propaganda, it's "Buy American!"  Or maybe, "Friends don't let friends smoke Mexican schwag." -- "R"R]

ONDCP's "High Gamer" Ad Campaign - Click to see for yourself!

Only the people who brought you Stoners in the Mist could think of an anti-marijuana ad campaign that tells kids smoking pot will make you bad at video games.  Hello?  This is in the same irony league as the maker of Pop Tarts firing the world’s greatest athlete for being a stoner.

I’m not a video game player myself (I work on computers, I don’t want to play on one), but maybe some gamers out there can tell us in the comments how much pot has ruined their video games skills.

The White House office responsible for fighting illegal drug use has focused for nearly a decade on youths smoking marijuana instead of a broader strategy that would sufficiently target adult drug users, according to a new study.

The nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration says the $1.2 million study, which it planned to release Thursday, found that the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush relied on selected data to show progress in combating illegal drug use by youth.

The office did not highlight less positive results among adults or pursue a comprehensive anti-drug strategy across age and demographic groups, the report found.

via Study criticizes Bush drug office for its focus on youths and marijuana, not adult drug users.

And with that California report I posted about how youth drug use is seriously underestimated by not counting misuse of cough syrup and prescription drugs, the Bush Administration’s focus on youth marijuana use at the expense of other drugs seems particularly wrong-headed.

Americans went to the polls on Tuesday and overwhelmingly rejected the anti-marijuana scare tactics of the Drug Czar John Walters and his various allies at the state and local level.  Nine out of ten marijuana initiatives passed, and the two big statewide initiatives, medical marijuana in Michigan and decrim in Massachusetts, got more votes that President-Elect Obama did.

Worried that the people in majorities greater than 60% are in support of marijuana law reform, the Drug Czar released the following youth anti-drug ad campaigns two weeks before election day:

(click thumbnails for full-size version of the print ad)
Burrito Taster 

Become a Burrito Taster!

Start earning now! Why waste the best days of your life going to college when you can become a burrito taster. Money, power and jet packs are some of the benefits that a certified Burrito Taster enjoys. That, and all the Burritos You Can Handle!  Restaurants, motels, clubs, theme parks, and space stations are just a few of the places that need experienced Burrito Tasters. EAT THE GOOD LIFE!!!

Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.

Couch Security Guard

Spend your days and nights as a certified COUCH SECURITY GUARD!

Can you handle excitement…cheese curls, leprechauns and sitting on a cushion for a LONG, LONG, time?  Then maybe you have what it takes to become a COUCH SECURITY GUARD!

Few careers offer a person thrills AND rich rewards. It’s not a dream. A career like this can be yours. Even with no experience or a fancy college degree. Get the facts today and start sitting tomorrow.

Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.

Remote Control Operator

Channels aren’t going to change THEMSELVES!

Become a TV Remote Control Operator!

AWESOME!  That’s the moneymaking power in being a remote control operator. It’s the business of your own that can be part- or full-time for quick and growing profits! No study-no training-just a few hours of practice and you are ready for pay, BIG PAY.  You can be in business practically overnight.

Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.

No jobs for potheads?  Did they forget “Official Podcaster for NORML?”

Seriously, though, even the Drug Czar can’t keep his scare tactics straight anymore.  Here he is frightening kids with the idea that cannabis consumers are too stoned to get jobs, yet on this page he is frightening businesses with the opposite idea:

Of the 16.6 million illicit drug users aged 18 or older in 2002, 12.4 million (74.6 percent) were employed either full or part time.

So about 75% of drug users managed to get jobs.  12.4 million jobs out there, and since about 80% of the “illicit drug users” are just marijuana smokers, then there are about 9.9 million working “potheads” (I’d venture that it’s greater than 10 million, since I believe cannabis consumers are more likely to hold down a job than a heroin addict or crack addict).

Has the Drug Czar ever eaten at a restaurant, seen a play, or attended a concert?  If so, I guarantee you he’s interacted with plenty of employed cannabis consumers.  We are doctors, lawyers, politicians, cops, teachers, firefighters, clergy, entrepreneurs, activists, artisans, and so much more.

Or has he followed the election on Tuesday?  One former “pothead” just got the biggest job in the country.  He takes over the job from a former “cokehead” and “pothead”, who beat out a former “pothead” in 2000 to get the job and beat another former ”pothead” in 2004 to keep it.

Study: Anti-Drug Ads Haven’t Worked
Despite investing $1 billion in a massive anti-drug campaign, a controversial new study suggests that the push has failed to help the United States win the war on drugs.

A congressionally mandated study released today concluded that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign launched in the late 1990s to encourage young people to stay away from drugs “is unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths.”

In fact, the study’s authors assert that anti-drug ads may have unwittingly delivered the message that other kids were doing drugs, inadvertently slowing measured progress that was being made to curb marijuana use among teenagers.

The study’s authors called the findings, published in the December edition of the American Journal of Public Health, “particularly worrisome because they were unexpected.”

Today, study author and professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, Robert Hornik, told ABCNews.com that the reported decline in marijuana use “could be due to lots of influences, not just the campaign.” He said he was expecting to conclude that the anti-drug campaign had positive effects, “but we couldn’t find ‘em.”

“Despite extensive funding, governmental agency support, the employment of professional advertising and public relations firms, and consultation with subject-matter experts, the evidence from the evaluation suggests that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign had no favorable effects on youths’ behavior and that it may even have had an unintended and undesirable effect on drug cognitions and use,” the report said.

In other words, teens who specifically said they had a lot of exposure to the campaign messages were no less likely to stay away from marijuana than those who did not.

There is also a small amount of evidence that indicates the anti-drug campaign may have had the opposite effect for some teens. In one part of the analysis, teens who recalled seeing 12 or more anti-drug messages per month were actually more likely to start using marijuana than those who had seen fewer anti-drug messages per month.

The Drug Czar is pushing back against this finding by noting the teen use of marijuana has declined in the years during this campaign.  So, despite these findings showing that it wasn’t the ads that made kids less likely to smoke weed, he’s going to accept the correlation that the ads did help, just because they happened at the same time.

So, then, it makes you wonder about the other major “ad campaign” of the late 90s and 2000s – the push for medical use of marijuana, beginning in 1996 in California and spreading to eleven other states (twelve this November).  We’ve actually got research that shows the rates of teen marijuana use, while declining in the 38 non-medical states, declined faster in the 12 medical states.

If we’re going to play the correlation game, why not say that it was medical marijuana, not reefer madness ads, that made kids less likely to use pot?  That seems to jibe better with the research shown here.