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The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it expects its YouTube messages to be ridiculed, laughed at, remade and spoofed. And they are.

The irony here is that, predictable as it may have been, ONDCP had no clue that this was going to happen. They deliberately generated media coverage of their YouTube page, only to find their videos marred by harsh comments and dismal viewer ratings. ONDCP quickly disabled these options, but the damage was done.

If they had genuinely anticipated this level of hostility from viewers, they would have optimized their page before sending out press releases about it. Because they did not, most ONDCP videos are now permanently stamped with the lowest-possible rating of one star.

This is to say nothing of the countless parodies that are now drowning out ONDCP’s unpopular propaganda. Since YouTube automatically recommends similar videos anytime you watch something, viewers of ONDCP’s materials are unavoidably connected to these abundant counter-messages. It is almost certainly for this reason that ONDCP has not uploaded a single new video since the page was first launched back in September 2006.

In a case like this, the mature decision would be to ignore them. But I find it amusing that even something as perfectly logical as expecting ridicule on YouTube turns out to be a lie when it comes from ONDCP.

Libby Davies, MP Vancouver East HANSARD, House of Commons June 4, 2007 Mr. Speaker, health and addictions professionals across Canada are bracing themselves for the worst when the Conservative government reveals its so-called new drug strategy that will sacrifice the successes of harm reduction and a balanced approach to drug use, for a heavy handed US style enforcement regime. Time and again, empirical evidence has proven that harm reduction works. Programs like needle exchanges and Vancouver's safe injection site, InSite, are reducing the transmission of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, and increasing the number of people accessing treatment. I am alarmed that despite this evidence, the government is accelerating the criminalization of drug users. The 2007 budget quietly removed harm reduction from Canada's new drug strategy. It now reads like a carbon copy of George Bush's war on drugs - which has seen drug use rise, along with skyrocketing social and economic costs of incarceration. In 2006, the Conservatives refused to renew the exemption that allows InSite to keep its doors open until pressure from the community forced them to grant a temporary extension. We know the Health Minister and the RCMP are now resorting to propaganda tactics to try and close InSite. Attacking InSite and adopting US drug policies will fail as dramatically here as it has in the US.

Well, that fence -- the reason I voted for the fence was that was the only alternative that was there, and I voted for the fence related to drugs. You can -- a fence will stop 20 kilos of cocaine coming through that fence. It will not stop someone climbing over it or around it.

And so -- but this bill has a much more reasonable provision in it. It has much -- much shorter fence, it does have the Border Patrol requirement, and it is designed not just to deal with illegals; it's designed -- a serious drug trafficking problem we have.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Biden, understand that he is not suffering from a stroke.* This guy just has a really hard time understanding drugs, but continues to bring them up whenever he’s under pressure. Biden’s unfortunate obsession/confusion regarding drugs has led him to create ONDCP, author the RAVE Act, and propose biological warfare in South America.

So does Biden dramatically misunderstand the role of actual people in physically transporting cocaine across the border? Is it really necessary to explain that some of the people who climb over or around the fence carry cocaine with them? Does he know that 20 kilos fits in a backpack?

Whether Biden realizes the absurdity of his remarks is beside the point. He got cornered for flip-flopping on the fence issue, so he cried “Drugs! If my positions appear contradictory, it’s because I was trying to fight drugs.” That’s what he does, because he knows there’s no accountability when you talk about “Drugs!”

*No offense to stroke victims. I’m not really comparing you to Joe Biden.

Washington, D.C., is one of America’s AIDS hot spots. A significant proportion of infections can be traced back to intravenous drug users who shared contaminated needles and then passed on the infection to spouses, lovers or unborn children. This public health disaster is partly the fault of Congress. It has wrongly and disastrously used its power over the District of Columbia’s budget to bar the city from spending even locally raised tax dollars on programs that have slowed the spread of disease by giving drug addicts access to clean needles.