Pubdate: Sun, 24 Mar 2002
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2002 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.sunspot.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Naftali Bendavid, Special To The Sun
Note: Naftali Bendavid is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

LINKING OF DRUG, TERROR FIGHTS CRITICIZED

Message That Funds Go To Militants Is Suspect, Say Control Experts

WASHINGTON - With the war on terrorism threatening to siphon support, money 
and attention from the fight against drugs, Bush administration officials 
increasingly are linking terrorist groups with drug traffickers. But some 
experts in drug control believe it is a dubious and dangerous strategy that 
could backfire.

The strategy, featuring splashy television commercials that debuted during 
the Super Bowl in January, tells teen-agers that by buying drugs they are 
handing money to the Sept. 11 terrorists and their ilk. It is backed up by 
an official push to make sure the anti-drug cause does not get swallowed up 
by the anti-terror campaign, but becomes part of it.

But some in the drug control sector say the message is factually suspect 
because most drug money goes nowhere near terrorists. Worse, they add, 
fingering America's millions of drug users, including pot- smoking 
teen-agers, as accomplices to terror is unrealistic and counterproductive.

"It's despicable and dangerous," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director 
of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that favors alternatives to the drug 
war. "When you start labeling tens of millions of Americans as accomplices 
to terrorists or de facto murderers, you are creating and stirring an 
atmosphere of intolerance and hate-mongering that ends up being destructive 
and dangerous to the broader society."

Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said 
the new message simply tells it like it is.

"Every time you buy drugs, the money goes to people who hurt, kill and 
maim," Riley said. "People won't buy a brand of sneakers because they use 
substandard labor in another part of the world. This money goes to people 
who are far, far worse than that."

The administration seized on the new message in the wake of Sept. 11 and 
shows no signs of letting go. Riley's office is running an elaborate ad 
campaign, leaders are testifying before Congress, officials are holding 
high-profile conferences, budget documents are being carefully crafted, all 
to make one basic point - that terrorists use drug money to finance their 
evil works.

In one sense, the new approach fits Bush's pattern of casting many of his 
goals as crucial to the war on terrorism, from tax cuts to health reform to 
energy policy. But the drug message is being broadcast with special vehemence.

The message sprang into public notice when the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy, often called the drug czar's office, launched a $10 million 
advertising campaign with two jarring 30-second ads during Super Bowl 
XXXVI. The ads have run frequently since, and print versions have appeared 
in nearly 200 newspapers.

In one, a young man says, "Yesterday afternoon, I did my laundry, went out 
for a run and helped torture someone's dad." In another, a youth says, 
"Last weekend I washed my car, hung out with a few friends and helped 
murder a family in Colombia."

The ads conclude somberly, "Drug money helps support terror. Buy drugs, and 
you could be supporting it, too."

The idea, sponsors say, is to get through to jaded young men and women who 
have been contemptuous of previous anti-drug messages and who view drug use 
as a victimless crime and a personal choice.

"One of the reasons these ads are so potent is that they appeal to the 
idealism of young people," drug czar John Walters said recently. "Where 
previous anti-drug ads have focused on the devastating toll that drugs take 
on individuals, these ads speak to young people's desire to make the world 
a better place."

The ads are only a small part of the administration's new drugs-equal- 
terror campaign. Last December, Bush signed a new anti-drug initiative and 
told his audience: "Terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to 
commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror 
in America."

Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the indictment of three 
members of a Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, or FARC, for allegedly conspiring to ship cocaine into the United 
States, and he stressed the "evil interdependence" between drugs and terrorism.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Drug Enforcement Administration 
convened its first conference on drugs and terrorism.

Earlier this month, DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson played up the 
drugs-terror connection in pushing a $1.7 billion budget request. 
Hutchinson knows he must compete with the enormous spending on the war on 
terrorism; Congress approved $40 billion to fight terrorism last year, and 
Bush is asking for $27 billion more.

In asking Congress last month for a budget increase, Hutchinson said the 
proposal would give the DEA "not only the money needed to fight drug abuse 
and drug trafficking, but would also help break the historic link between 
drugs, violence and terrorism."

Those who oppose the war on drugs are distressed by this drumbeat. The new 
message, in their view, is merely a way to reinvigorate a discredited war 
on drugs. Only a tiny fraction of drug dollars flows to terrorists, they 
said, and the assertion that buying drugs helps terrorism is questionable 
at best.

"You have to stretch a long way to make that plausible," said Peter Reuter, 
a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland. "Marijuana, which is 
what the vast majority of drug users use, is grown primarily in the United 
States and Mexico and has no connection with terrorism."

Others said a portion of the money from many purchases - from diamonds to 
athletic shoes - goes to unsavory characters, so drugs are hardly unique in 
this way. And they questioned the ads' effectiveness, saying skeptical 
teen-agers were unlikely to buy the argument that smoking marijuana after 
school helps Osama bin Laden.

"This is an effort to demonize drug users," said Eric Sterling, president 
of the liberal Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "At a time when many are 
talking about the importance of drug treatment, this rhetoric sends the 
message that drug users are not people with chemical dependencies, they are 
aiding and abetting terrorists and need to be locked up."

Riley, the drug czar's spokesman, dismissed such arguments. The vehement 
protestations, he said, merely reflect the message's effectiveness.

Supporters of the campaign say it is obvious that terrorism and drug- 
dealing form a seamless web: Terrorists use drugs to finance their killing, 
and drug lords kill to protect their trafficking.

FARC, a group that has murdered and kidnapped thousands, receives $300 
million a year from cocaine trafficking, U.S. officials say. The Taliban, 
while officially banning poppy cultivation, nonetheless profited 
financially from the opium trade, according to the DEA.
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