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