What Has the Drug Czar’s Ad Campaign Done for You?
I must not be high enough to understand what exactly the point is of this latest ad from the drug czar’s office — the behaviors depicted in it seem typical for lots of teenagers, straight or stoned. Still, I’m happy to help them get their message out, whatever it is. Feel free to use the comments section and give me your own interpretations.
January 14, 2009 33 Comments
Blog Wars Episode V: The Empire’s Hacks
Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s “City Insider” blog picked up my last post about ONDCP’s spurious claims that San Francisco houses more medical marijuana facilities than Starbucks shops. A senior health inspector for the city told The Chronicle that ONDCP’s claim that nearly 100 medical marijuana facilities are operating downtown was “extremely incorrect.” The city official confirmed that there are actually 24 medical marijuana facilities in the entire city.
The Chronicle further pointed out how absurd ONDCP’s claims were from the perspective of anyone who actually knows San Francisco, and noted that ONDCP couldn’t even get their numbers straight when it came to how many Starbucks are in the city.
It didn’t take long for the ONDCP to respond with a new blog post announcing the “good news” that their previous post received some “MSM (mainstream media) attention.” The fact that the drug czar’s office considers an article calling them liars to be “good news” should tell you all you need to know about George W. Bush’s drug policy hacks.
ONDCP also altered its original post by reducing its random figure of 98 dispensaries to 71 – an equally arbitrary number. They claim to have obtained their list of medical marijuana dispensaries from a Google search; however the Google.com I use doesn’t yield results approaching anywhere near 71. Of course, a link to ONDCP’s source is conspicuously missing from their post.
ONDCP also decided to take a swipe at MPP and other supporters of medical marijuana by calling us “Washington, D.C. based lobbying groups that, attempting to legalize marijuana outright, prey on the compassion of voters.” Apparently, then, the dozens of prestigious medical organizations that support medical marijuana are also nothing more than predators for legalization…?
It’s ONDCP that’s really the distant Washington, D.C.-based group preying on taxpayers – who are forced to pay for the outright lies broadcasted on their blog, regardless of what San Francisco city officials or its hometown newspaper have to say about reality.
The truth is that San Francisco’s leaders have worked hard to regulate the city’s medical marijuana facilities, and it’s the federal government’s war on marijuana users that has caused real harm to the city.
November 18, 2008 3 Comments
