Drug Propaganda Thursday

Radley Balko | December 28, 2006

This week, we'll go with one of my all-time favorites. It comes from New Zealand. If you're eating, you might want to pass on this one for now.

Comments

Warren|12.28.06 @ 4:01PM|#

ROFL Oh that's precious. I like the way he leaves his credit card on the toilet seat for the next guy.

|12.28.06 @ 4:17PM|#

I'm all for legalizing drugs and letting people do as they please. But that doesn't mean plenty of people aren't destroying their lives with drugs. Yeah, some people use drugs responsibly, but many get addicted and do destroy their bodies, their families and their lives. I don't believe government should give a hoot, but that doesn't make ads like this "propaganda." Ineffective, maybe. A waste of taxpayer money, probably. But propaganda? No.

|12.28.06 @ 4:19PM|#

I don't get the logic of this one. How is taking drugs like snorting up part of your brain?

|12.28.06 @ 4:36PM|#

Love zombie movies. Love new wave. Gotta give it two thumbs up!!

|12.28.06 @ 4:41PM|#

But zombies don't eat their own brains -- they eat other people's brains. (That's why they're scary, supposedly.)

Warren|12.28.06 @ 4:44PM|#

John,
WTF?
I'm with you all the way. I am the biggest anti-prohibitionist around. I too have seen people fuck up their lives with drugs. I've seen people fuck up their lives with religion too. People fuck up their lives in all kinds of ways.

But how is this anything but propaganda? From Dictionary.com:
1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

Because some people have abused drugs, that validates this irreverent, irrelevant, je ne c'est quoi, irregardless?

|12.28.06 @ 4:44PM|#

So if you snort cranberry sauce from a super cool head stash you'll be rich, good looking and only use sparkling clean restrooms? I don't get it.

Thomas Paine\'s Goiter|12.28.06 @ 4:48PM|#

Wait, what kind of high is brain?

daksya|12.28.06 @ 4:49PM|#

John, most users don't become dependent.

|12.28.06 @ 4:52PM|#

So I just finished Jacob Sullum's Saying Yes. It was excellent, one of the few books that I truly wish I could actually force people to read.

Towards the end when he's advancing a policy of moderate drug laws to govern a society of moderate drug use, one of Sullum's best points is that part of the (real) harm from drug use come from the ridiculous form in which they're consumed. Why do we snort cocaine (harmful) rather than chew coca leaves or drink coca wine?

For the same reason that we used to drink Bathtub gin. Prohibition means that suppliers who are both ruthless and economically rational give us hyper-concentrated and adulterated product. Consider: supply is uncertain, it's easier to stash a smaller supply, and people with limited options need to get their money's worth. Notice that although it's available, most people don't spend all their time drinking 160-proof rum.

Snorting coke may in fact be bad. Drinking original formula Coca-cola almost certainly isn't.

But now we're left only with the prospect of the former. The Drug War makes safe drug use much, much harder.

Damned prohibition screws up everything.

|12.28.06 @ 4:55PM|#

John,

How do you define "propaganda?"

|12.28.06 @ 5:07PM|#

This appears to be an advertisement. Misleading, yes, but the airwaves are full of misleading ads. When cocaine and other drugs become legal, churches, rehab centers, and other organizations will buy airtime to convince people that drugs are bad. Other organizations (i.e, drug makers) can counter with ads touting the benefits of their products and showing how the anti-drug organizations are wrong.

|12.28.06 @ 5:08PM|#

Because some people have abused drugs, that validates this irreverent, irrelevant, je ne c'est quoi, irregardless?

"Irregardless" is not a word. Irrespective is a word. Regardless is a word. Please choose from one of them. Irregardless is a bastardized mash-up.

|12.28.06 @ 5:15PM|#

Look you guys this is ART!


There is a guy, in a bathroom, ripping his skull back and snorting it like coke. That is art. The only thing missing is, him waking up in an ice bath, in an undisclosed warehouse with an organ missing...art.

Oh and some naked bitches... who hug naked.

Art.

|12.28.06 @ 5:22PM|#

Irregardless is a bastardized mash-up.

Was it on the Xmas CD?

|12.28.06 @ 5:27PM|#

Bregenwurst anyone?

|12.28.06 @ 5:32PM|#

Last night I had a dream that a hamburger was eating me.

|12.28.06 @ 5:33PM|#

I agree with this advertisement. Adrenochrome is the shit.

Warren|12.28.06 @ 5:55PM|#

Smappy,
You persimmon-puss schoolmarm you. 'Irregardless' is a perfectly cromulent word. It means 'regardless only more so'. Unfortunately for you, the English speaking world does not acknowledge you as our arbitrator. Put that in your thesaurus and cross reference it grammar queen.

edna|12.28.06 @ 6:07PM|#

"videodrome is more dangerous than that, max. it has a philosophy."

long live the new flesh.

|12.28.06 @ 6:16PM|#

Warren, the English-speaking world may not acknowledge Smappy as its arbitrator, but I can't find any authority that approves of "irregardless." E.g., usage note in American Heritage 4th ed. ("it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so"); Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage ("should have been stamped out long ago"); even the ultra-permissive Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage ("still a long way from winning general acceptance as a standard English word").

|12.28.06 @ 6:18PM|#

I don't see how this is so bad. Powder cocaine is quite nasty stuff, even if, as was mentioned, coca leaves and original formula coca-cola aren't bad.

In the absence of draconian drug laws and SWAT raids, this ad wouldn't be bad at all, and in their presence whatever wrongness it has pales in comparison.

Now, if he was going into the bathroom to light up a joint, that'd be another story.

|12.28.06 @ 6:49PM|#

jb,

I think it really is so bad because of the text at the end. "Every day, more and more people are lining up to destroy themselves." That's just ridiculously untrue.

|12.28.06 @ 7:09PM|#

Warren,

Because some people have abused drugs, that validates this irreverent, irrelevant, je ne c'est quoi, irregardless?

I believe you meant "je ne sais quoi." What you said is akin to saying "I don't that is know." But don't worry about your French, work on your English first.


You may be the first person I've seen fuck up multiple languages in a single sentence.

Hannibal Lecter|12.28.06 @ 7:29PM|#

I don't see what the problem is here.

uncle sam|12.28.06 @ 7:35PM|#

This is your druggie on brains.

Warren|12.28.06 @ 8:18PM|#

andy,
Good to know.

|12.28.06 @ 8:20PM|#

Peter Jackson used the same skull gag to hilarious effect in his first movie, Bad Taste.

|12.28.06 @ 8:24PM|#

These evolving language people are idiots. "Irregardless," a word? Never. The English language was designed to perfection several decades back, just around the time you started school. Those that say that it evolved or is still evolving are idiot satanists. Pay them no mind, while they snort theirs to oblivion.

|12.28.06 @ 8:39PM|#

jp, smappy, ILD:

Usage determines, disirregardlessly of what you pontificate.




Uncle Sam @ 7:35 PM wins the thread!

dhex|12.28.06 @ 10:00PM|#

holy shit that was truly excellent. the design is nice. the soundtrack: excellent. pure class all around.

|12.28.06 @ 10:17PM|#

Les: OK, so there is hyperbole. Still, I think it's tame compared to some of the other Drug Propaganda Thursdays, or to other aspects of the drug war in general.

In fact, since there is a continual stream of new cocaine users, I'd argue that this ad lies less than many commercials for actual products.

Of course, I'm extremely cynical.

|12.28.06 @ 10:29PM|#

Legalize drugs to take the profit out of pay toilets.

|12.28.06 @ 10:39PM|#

Soooo, is Columbia suffering from a 'brain' drain?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/
0,,1975161,00.html

|12.29.06 @ 1:25AM|#

I can just imagine Basil Fawlty striding in at the moment of truth and saying, "Is this a piece of your brain..."

|12.29.06 @ 4:25AM|#

It was a comedy right? I thought it was funny. The War on Drugs isn't funny.It destroys as all wars do.

|12.29.06 @ 8:16AM|#

Aresen -- U is right, i should just goes wit teh flows.

A Rational Person|12.29.06 @ 9:11AM|#

If given the choice, I would much rather have my confiscated money put to the use of creating commercials than SWAT team raids. I am no fan of the War on Drugs but I do agree with the message of this commercial, that powder cocaine is destructive. I was not alive when original formula Coca-Cola existed so I cannot speak for that but certainly cocaine in the form it commonly exists today is VERY destructive. I am all for advertisements that try to convince people not to destroy their lives (I just do not always agree with the way they are funded). This is called persuasion.

|12.29.06 @ 12:04PM|#

I am all for advertisements that try to convince people not to destroy their lives (I just do not always agree with the way they are funded).

But this commercial asserts that simply using cocaine will destroy your life. I believe the available evidence shows that the vast majority of people who use cocaine are not destroying their lives because they use it in the same way that the vast majority of people use alcohol, recreationally instead of habitually.

|12.29.06 @ 12:20PM|#

Peter Jackson used the same skull gag to hilarious effect in his first movie, Bad Taste.

I saw that movie in High School and thought it was a great B movie. Everyone I have ever mentioned it to has no idea what I was talking about. Never realized it was Peter Jackson who directed it.

"Bad Taste" was the first thing I thought of when I saw the ad. Good to know there are others who have seen this movie, too.

|12.29.06 @ 2:38PM|#

The English language was designed to perfection several decades back, just around the time you started school.

The English language was ruined in 1066. Compared with the bastardizations English has gone through since then, nothing we do now really matters.

daksya|12.29.06 @ 3:24PM|#

so I cannot speak for that but certainly cocaine in the form it commonly exists today is VERY destructive.

Actually, no. Until smoked cocaine really took hold in the 80s, the DSM didn't even have a category for cocaine dependence.

Thanks to the War on Drugs, most people, certainly Americans, don't know this but the WHO alongwith UNICRI conducted a global study on cocaine use in the early 90s. The resulting report showed that most cocaine users used it occasionally for a period of years and suffered no significant harm. Most harm was concentrated among chronic high-dose users. The report also claimed that coca leaf use had positive benefits. Since these findings contradicted the dogma of the prohibitionists, the US representative threatened to curtail further funding if the report was officially published. It wasn't published. But a press release had been inadvertently released beforehand and was covered by the British Medical Journal. Some of the materials, including a summary of the report and the minutes of the meeting containing the US threat were recovered and are available here. Of course, I'm ignoring lonitudinal ethnographic studies of real-world cocaine use (as opposed to just those who show up in treatment) such as those by Tom DeCortes in Belgium or Peter Cohen in the Netherlands. If you want, I'll find those citations.

|12.29.06 @ 5:00PM|#

Sorry- but the DSM is just as political as anything else. Prior to the 80s, cocaine was associated with criminals, long-haul truck drivers and 'jazz-playing Negroes', and therefore of no importance. When smoked cocaine and snorted cocaine both became middle-class problems, scientists became interested in their abuse.
There's also the factor that cocaine prior to the 80s was relatively impure. Like marijuana up to that point, it didn't have as much of a kick as it does now. During the 80s, when rich and middle class whites atarted using it by the ton and their noses started collapsing and their lungs started to fray, the DSM began to include it.
That doesn't mean coke wasn't a problem. It just wasn't a problem for people who mattered to those in power.

daksya|12.30.06 @ 3:46PM|#

That doesn't mean coke wasn't a problem.

I didn't say that, was only countering the claim that powder cocaine is "very destructive". Off the top of my head, drug use in the US peaked in 1979. The specific trend for cocaine is closely aligned. Cocaine did merit plenty of attention among academics - see the special issue on cocaine in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (later renamed Journal of Psychoactive Drugs) in the mid or late 70s, including profiles of middle-class use.