Pubdate: Fri, 03 May 2002 Source: Community News (NY) Copyright: Community News 2002 Contact: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1668 Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2233 Author: Brian Beckley Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign) DEVIL'S ADVOCATE: TEEN DRUG USE NOT BEHIND TERRORISM The commercial looks familiar because we've all been branded by constant repetition from credit card companies. The costs of various items and necessities that revolve around the Sept. 11 attacks slowly reveal themselves on the screen. Plane tickets. Explosives. Box cutters. Prices, in a well-known font, appear next to the item names. It's familiar, yet twisted, like a prom punch that's been spiked. But instead of ending with "priceless," as other commercials of the same style always do, the ending links teenage drug use with providing terrorists with the means to attack us. "Where do terrorists get their money? If you buy drugs, it could come from you." While this commercial, one of two with the same message, effectively links the war on drugs with the war on terror, two open-ended campaigns that have no end game and can not be won until their root causes are addressed, it sidesteps the real issues. Money for the Sept. 11 attacks did not come from teen-agers buying pot or ecstasy. It came from Saudi Arabia, like 15 of the 19 terrorists themselves. While it's true that money spent on various drugs around the world do help pay for terrorist activities (Islamic fundamentalist and otherwise), much of the government's current push is unsubstantiated. The vast majority of the drugs grown and processed in Afghanistan are poppy-based, like heroin or opium. Without denying that some of their product has undoubtedly reached U.S. shores, many of the other drugs found in this country come from Asia, South America or are grown and processed right here in the good old U.S. of A. Without advocating the use of any illegal substance, I think the implication that teen-agers smoking pot or dropping ecstasy (both of which can be very dangerous, not to mention result in fines, jail time, and/or brain damage and a good stiff grounding) supplied Osama bin Laden, a Saudi multi-millionaire, with funding for the Sept. 11 attacks must have come from someone who was doing a little home-testing on the theory. Our dependence on oil is what continues to supply our enemies with enough money to attack us. And our dependence on oil leads to our dependence on nations like Saudi Arabia, who really don't like us or anything we stand for -- except money. Last week, the Saudi Crown Prince met with President Bush at his Texas ranch to talk about how the United State's continued support for Israel could put a strain on our relationship with the most oil rich chunk of desert on the planet. What? They're worried about us soiling the relationship? This is the same country that supplied passports to 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers and more recently raised an astounding $92 million in a telethon held in support of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, who, by the way, Saudi diplomats call "martyrs." Meanwhile, according to German newspapers, the Saudi government is offering $5,000 for each al Qaida member willing to relocate to the West Bank or Gaza Strip. To break our ties to Saudi Arabia is to break our ties to terror. We are all guilty. Each one of us that drives a gas-guzzler to work or school by his or herself has played a larger part than some stoner puffing a doobie before a Phish concert. As one of my friends put it recently, "I drive an SUV and I have blood on my hands." The time has come to talk of increased gas mileage requirements and a focus on renewable fuels. I believe in American ingenuity and I know that there are people right now trying to make money on renewable energy and when they do, this world will not only be a cleaner place, but countries like Saudi Arabia will no longer have us over a barrel (or 10.4 million barrels a day, to be more precise). Ah, but we'll never hear that from an administration of oil barons that met with each oil company in turn (and sometimes over and over again) before releasing an energy policy that not only slashes the renewable energy and energy conservation budget, but only prolongs our dependency on foreign oil while attempting to destroy a pristine piece on Alaskan wilderness. We do not know how much, if any, oil is locked under the Alaskan National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR). And while the only way to find out is to dig, the consequences can not even begin to be measured; changes in animal migratory patterns, air and land temperature changes, noise, pollution, garbage, just to name a few. Luckily, the Senate last week voted against Alaskan drilling, choosing to put the health of the planet ahead of their wallets and campaign war chests. Sometimes they surprise even me. Speaking of the administration's energy policy and its continued reliance on a limited resource supplied mainly by our enemies, it should warm your heart to know that documents indicate that while Vice President Cheney, who was given a $25 million retirement package from Haliburton Oil just days before accepting his nomination, met with industry big wigs, he avoided alternate and renewable energy lobbies like the plague. In fact, according to Reuters, the administration used $137,615 from the Energy Department's solar and renewable energy and energy conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the plan, which calls for 50 percent cuts to renewable resources. An additional $176 was taken to pay for an Alaskan trip by Andrew Lundquist, task force staff director, to promote the plan, which includes drilling throughout the ANWR. Sort of ironic, isn't it? If the budget had already been cut there would have been no money to print their report calling for the cuts. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex