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Drug Czar Sets New Standard for Stoner Stereotyping

Just when you thought anti-marijuana propaganda couldn't get any more frivolous and shallow, the drug czar arrives with a new slogan: "Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads."

The whole thing is just absurd on its face, released days after a former marijuana user was elected president and weeks after the drug czar’s own blog observed that 75% of illicit drug users have jobs.

These new ads read like a mockery of typical drug czar propaganda, devoid of facts and premised on the self-evidently false proposition that marijuana use is some kind of physical handicap. It is just so over-the-top crazy and childish that I must keep reminding myself that it is the nation’s top drug policy official who is responsible for this.

Politics & Advocacy ONDCP

Malkavian's picture

Preaching to the choir

I think you're right. Those interested in trying cannabis and those currently doing it aren't going to listen to these ads. They will orient themselves by observing their peer and their own experiences with cannabis.

Here they will see what everybody else _in_ the subculture sees and experiences: that pot isn't really particularly addictive, that most of the pot smokers actually do quite well in school or on the job, and they don't feel particularly "unmotivated".

And quite frankly - those adds ARE trying to be the pot smoker's mom with the hyperbole and raised fingers.

So the ads only act to reinforce those already abstaining, and it tells them the same dreadful story of a youth on pot that's "completely unproductive" (although that's a blatant lie).


Nationalsozialistische Propaganda 101

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself."

-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), Vol. I

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