Pubdate: Fri, 05 Apr 2002
Source: News Journal (DE)
Copyright: 2002 The News Journal
Contact:  http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/822
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

TV ADS CONNECTING DRUGS AND TERROR ARE BRUTAL TRUTH

The anti-drug ads now on TV, in which fresh-faced American youth say, "I 
helped murder families in Colombia, "I helped a bomber get a fake 
passport," "I helped blow up buildings" are arresting at first, then invite 
skepticism.

More overkill. Kids will only tune them out. Go after real criminals with 
no-holds-barred policing. Stop hyping the war on terrorism at every turn.

Except the ugly accusations are essentially accurate, given years of 
accumulated intelligence about how druglords and insurgents co-exist amid 
chaos.

It's time American drug users were confronted with their connection to it. 
They're a hugely lucrative market exploited by traffickers pursuing ends 
even worse than addiction. They're after money to commit mayhem.

Legitimate governments in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are besieged by drug 
traders, who attack high officials and ordinary innocents alike with 
bombings, kidnapping and torture. Russian crime syndicates extend through 
Eastern Europe and to Afghanistan's porous border. American authorities 
predict Afghan farmers, desperate for a cash crop to support starving 
families, will again produce most of the world's heroin this year in the 
absence of any civil control. Middle Eastern militants such as Hezbollah 
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are also identified as drug traffickers.

In fact, the U.S. State Department links half of 28 known terrorist groups 
to drugs.

Reciting that list will have absolutely no effect on Americans who are 
already addicts. Their hope lies in intervention and treatment.

But those who are still only tempted or dabbling in the drug nether world 
ought not be let off the hook: Buying drugs is consorting with criminals 
with monstrous tentacles that reach right to the atrocities we see too many 
nights on TV.
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MAP posted-by: Beth