Ahoy mateys, as ye be well aware, today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Take ye a fine time to affix yer thoughts on the majesty o’ being a Buccaneer! You Bilge Rats, ‘ll cast ye curs down to Davey Jones’ Locker if ye don’t be complyin’.

Dar!

While we be talkin’ about the burotherhood of the sea, I be thinkin about certain matters closer t’ home. Fer instance, allow me to d’rect yer attention t’ Salon Magazine, an’ their story about how the Guvvamint be usin’ lies an half truths to discourage young lads and lassies from smokin’ pot.

Ahem

(Full disclosure: I don’t smoke pot, and I find pot culture to be annoying and filled with lame music. I do however think it should be legal.)

But seriously. Salon has an article up about the government’s latest hilarious anti-pot campaign. Read it here. You might think they’d realize that by resorting to ridiculous falsehoods, the only thing they’ll accomplish is to amuse people. No matter what they’re saying, it’s obvious to anyone who’s ever been around pot that the mental illness the Bush Administration is trying to associate with it is nothing but an outright lie. Pot’s not exactly good for your brain, and it might make you kind of slow and willing to listen to Jam Bands, but it certainly won’t cause you to go insane (though most definitely may cause you to become inane).

Plus, we have a vastly popular legal means of brain-destruction that we seem to have to official trouble with. I wonder then, just what the hell is it about pot that makes conservatives flip out like this? Did conservotar, the ancient God of conservatavism have a fight with Marijuanos, the god of pot, and get his ass kicked?

It should be no secret that the drug scene is in many ways a reflection of class differences in America. Cocaine is hugely widespread right now, and yet mysteriously we see no sweeping anti-cocaine ad campaign. Of course we all know who the stereotypical cocaine consumer is, however, and they generally don’t vote green party.

Now it should be noted that Anti-drug commericals aren’t aimed at people who actually use drugs (Except maybe those retarded “If you smoke pot, you’re in Al Queda” ads from a few years ago.) People who use drugs have already made an informed (or uninformed, depending on your point of view) decision about their chemical intake, and aren’t likely to be turned because johnny law told them they’ll catch the schizophrennia. Addiction and recovery do the trick, genrally, but even then most people are smart enough to bear in mind that their experience isn’t neccesarily a universal experience.

(For now, we’ll leave behind a discussion of the drugs that are, in fact, highly addictive and life threatening. Especially since one of them is legal and available in convenient stores. As long as you’re 18. You can assume from here and past writings that I have unfavorable opinions on a good lot of them. I also don’t think people should rot in jail for them either.)

The anti drug campaign as it’s been handled under Bush serves one purpose only: To make conservatives flip out, and thus make them more likely to vote republican as a means of protecting the country from those damn kids and their evil, evil drugs! It doesn’t take a military genius to figure out that for the most part, these guys don’t really give a damn about drugs. They’ve merely found drugs and drug panic to be useful for getting elected. Certainly, they don’t mind locking up thousands of people for nonviolent drug offenses and crowing about their tough stance on crime, but that would happen even if they didn’t have drugs.

Unfortunately for them, they have to pick and choose how they go about it. Unlike Clinton for instance, Bush and his ilk never, ever admit to having done anything illegal, but also have some rasther juicy rumors surrounding them, expecially Bush himself. This limits how effectively they can discuss drugs – They have to be aware that if they flip out about, say, cocaine, they risk too many uncomfortable questions being asked about their own lives.

As an added bonus, pot is associated with those evil commies, dirty hippes and black, ha ha, I mean crazy Jazz musicians. Conservatives opponents of Pot get to benefit from irrational drug panic, while at the same time using their beloved code words for liberals and minorites. It’s win win, except for Americans who seem to consider personal liberty important.

Anyway, the latest ad campaign is profiled over at Salon magazine, and I recommend having a look. If you don’t feel like waiting through the ‘brief ad’, why not simply click here and see the latest ad for yourself. It’s rare that the government’s anti drug advertisements both offend my intelligence, and my sense of history, but this one manages to do both. Enjoy.