Meth Jokes: Now Taxpayer-Funded!
Back in April, the Minnesota alt-weekly City Pages published a satirical pro-meth entry in their "Best of the Twin Cities" list. It was abundantly clear that City Pages was writing against meth; nonetheless, they had to put out a firestorm started by radio hosts and a Republican Senate candidate.
That's how that went down—what's different about this?
Well, this is a faux magazine cover designed by the DEA as part of a swingin' anti-meth campaign aimed at those damn teenagers. If you can see the difference between the DEA's revelation—that the way to combat a drug is to upend the "cool" factor—and what City Pages was attacked over, you win a prize! (Note: Prize will not be meth.)
Nick Gillespie's demolition of Newsweek's meth hype is here; Jacob Sullum's cool take on the same topic is here.
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Oooh! Oooh! The City Paper satire was actually informative. What’s my prize?!
No, Rimfax, it’s “the city paper actually succeeded in upending the cool, whereas the DEA’s attempt is like an ex-hippie grandfather trying to be “down” with the younger generation by saying things like “That Britney Spears is pretty groovy, huh?”
I know ! City Pages was funded with private money. That and it was sarcastically funny. The DEA magazine cover is funded with tax dollars and is lame.
Far out. Outtasight. Dig it. Heavy.
Next the DEA will focus its attention on all of those meth-id actors in Hollywood. Yuck, yuck.
A reminder to us all that “DEA” is Latin for “goddess”. Could be significant, maybe not. All I’m sayin’ is, semper ubi sub ubi.
“That Britney Spears is pretty groovy, huh?”
Well, she was before she got all fat and stuff. Now they chase her out of stores on Rodeo Drive because she keeps breastfeeding in the dressing rooms.
She should just feed K-Fed @ home, dig?
K-Rob
I’ve always been awed at the unintended irony of PSAs that charge the kids to; think for themselves and not bow to peer pressure, while exerting them to conform to the approved behavior by lamely aping their anti-establishment peers.
The meth epidemic is such an over-hyped bunch of crap. I was chatting with a neighbor the other day and she was all “Oh this meth problem is really something terrible?” and I asked her “What meth problem?” I essentially challenged her to name one time and one place where she had seen a meth lab or a meth user or if she knew of anyone anywhere who used meth or had kids who did….
But it is all over the local press, of course, and I pointed out to her that there was this article about new funding for the meth unit at one of the local town’s police forces and how they were hyping the war… deep in one of the articles the paper noted that there had not been a single meth lab uncovered in two years….
As I said to her:
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it”
The story about the Minnesota alt-weekly reminds me about the time in college (Rutgers, like Nick Gillespie and Cathy Young) that a white editorial cartoonist caught absolute hell with screaming protests from the Black Student Union et. al. for drawing a cartoon defending affirmative action.
In the cartoon, one character complains that affirmative action is another way blacks get “a free ride.”
The comeback from the (obvious) protagonist in the strip was that blacks did indeed get a free ride “on a slave ship!” [Ooooooooooooh!]
I think that the naive young white cartoonist got his ass fired, although I can’t quite remember.
Sometimes I wonder whether drug cops are the cause of these hysterias. Ultimately, they’re the ones who benefit in terms of increased funding and job security. Throw in the idea of reducing the threshold for trafficking to possession levels. and you have quite a little conspiracy.
David,
Well, the DEA are the ‘drug cops’ for the nation, so I’d say yes. Seriously, if your paycheck rode on the back of a myth, would you do a damn thing to dispel that myth? Even if Joe BeatWalker doesn’t actively promote the War on Drugs, he isn’t about to do a damn thing to counter it for fear of losing his job. This is one of the reasons that LEAP is such a great organization. It is composed of folks who dealt with the drug trade day in and day out and are speaking out against the sham that is the War on Drugs.
Garth,
Her failure to cite an example, while asserting that there is an actual problem, is known as a “spotlight fallacy,” IIRC. It’s much the same as saying there’s violence all over the country; after all, what else is dominating the evening news?
Kwix- As a man with some self respect I could care less about keeping a job that has functions such as the DEA’s. Likewise for the little girls that come around to collect our urine for drug testing. I would sooner move into the woods and worry about killing something for dinner than take any of these lame WOD created jobs. Sure work is work but when your work is to try and catch people for doing nothing other than their own choices your a pathetic individual with little left to live for. I could not imagine my sole job being the collection of urine all day everyday.
Something about double standards and hypocrits just makes me sick. My best friends bro-in-law was warden of the local jail. Yet he would leave everyday and go home and smoke up the ganja. How anyone can walk away from their work knowing others are locked away for the exact same thing your going home free to do is beyond me paycheck or not. If that is the only way you have to support yourself your a worthless piece of crap.
BTW- I still have that crisp $100 bill for anyone who can tell me what 65.4% of the number written on my desk amounts to. Perhaps a DEA statistics department employee will win it. Since they seem to always know exactly what % of drugs they stopped from entering the country each year.
?This is one of the reasons that LEAP is such a great organization. It is composed of folks who dealt with the drug trade day in and day out and are speaking out against the sham that is the War on Drugs.?
My dad is a small town cop; he?s sick of dealing with meth users and wished to god it wasn?t his job to baby-sit them. But you wont hear him say that to his boss and colleagues. Heresy.
I was once in a jury pool sitting for a kid that had been caught with a small amount of meth. One woman who was chosen for the jury admitted that she was biased because her house had been burglarized by (what the cops told here) was likely a meth user. On the flip side, I wasn?t chosen. Probably because I said drug laws were an inexcusable infringement on personal liberty. Too bad, I wanted to help the poor kid out.
I learned my lesson. Next time I?m going to lie.
“How anyone can walk away from their work knowing others are locked away for the exact same thing your going home free to do is beyond me paycheck or not.”
It’s not beyond me. What to you is a bug to others is a feature. It probably gratifies that person greatly. It’s like, “I won, because I got to do it and you didn’t.” The satisfaction of besting somebody. Remember that a large factor in people’s measurement of their satisfaction is comparison to others.
Sage +P, Garth, and the rest:
According to NationMaster.com (Where Stats Come Alive!), Indiana State Police found just 6 meth labs in 1995, and found 1,260 labs in 2003, which is like a 20,000% increase. While I think its due mostly to increased cop stuff, there is at least an argument that there is an epidemic, depending on your definition of epidemic. Dismissing an argument because the person didn’t spend a bunch of time providing links doesn’t help your argument. It just gives you a short reprieve. I think the “epidemic” is hype as well, but it isn’t such an amateurish campaign as you make it out to be. They actually are finding meth labs and junkies. Just because you don’t know anyone, doesn’t mean that I don’t know ten. Still, full disclosure: I don’t know any, but at least I recognize the weaknesses in my arguments.
Lamar,
Your number (20,000%) is a very scary one… but your same number means that for the more than six million residents of indiana there was a 0.02% chance of one of them operating one (that was found). I hardly think that that qualifies as a 1) epidemic; 2) a justification for the hype; or 3) a reason to paramilitarize the police forces as has happened in so many places.
I think the increase you site and the overall number indicates a small and localized fad. One that, like crack (oooo! remember crack?!?) will fade away on its own.
Garth, my sentiments exactly. That’s how you deal with counter-arguments. You prove it wrong. Saying that an argument is a fallacy doesn’t say that the argument is untrue. I agree with your analysis and it has more power because you showed that the assertion (e.g., that 20,000% is an epidemic number) was wrong. You didn’t just hit the critical thinking text book and cite to a certain fallacy and claim victory.
Lamar,
Your stats, while on their face looking very significant, leaves something important out. When ISP found 6 labs in 1995, what percentage of total operating labs was that? Same with the 2003 number.
You know how you get more funding for your operation? Show that it’s working. Or show that the problem is getting worse. Specsmanship is funny like that.
But What I told Garth is certainly true: His neighbor said there was a meth epidemic because…well, there’s…I mean, look at…(she had nothing).
I think the real message on the cover is that meth causes The Children to have interracial relationships and interracial sex. Scary for parents no doubt.
lamar, could you please try and sucker more good arguments out on other threads.
i did so enjoy that.
How about this:
Meth users may be self medicating:
The War On Unpatented Drugs.
The medical cartel would prefer that they used one of its standard products instead of those filthy (unpatented) street drugs.