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David Spates The war on drugs: Not ready for prime time The war on drugs is big business. There is
a ton of money moving from account to account all in the name
of ending illegal drug use in America. With all of that money
swirling around, it comes as no surprise to me that sometimes
other issues get trampled upon. It has recently come to light that the federal
government has been using financial incentives to persuade television
networks to weave anti-drug messages into the storylines of some
TV shows. Does this idea bother anyone else? Yes, the government
should do everything it can to fight illegal drugs, but this
just rubs me the wrong way. There's a distinctive Orwellian taste
in my mouth over this one. Subtly inserting messages from the
government into our media products is going too far. Here's a little background from some stories
I pulled from the Associated Press. This arrangement stems from a 1997 congressional
move to buy anti-drug advertisements on TV. The networks were
asked to give a freebie commercial for every ad that the government
bought. The problem was that the networks which, as we
know, are in the business to make a buck suddenly found
themselves giving away incredibly valuable advertising time.
Not to mention that the ads' effectiveness was thought to be
marginal at best. The oh-so-accommodating federal government
then agreed to give up some of its ad time if the networks were
able to demonstrate that some of their programs conveyed anti-drug
messages. The money-grubbing network weasels of course jumped
at the chance. The networks free up ad space, and the government
gets out the word that this is your brain on drugs, cool kids
don't use drugs, etc. Everybody's happy, right? Well, no, not everybody's happy. If the government wants to convey a particular
message via TV networks, it should buy ads like everyone else.
If the networks can be "persuaded" to include certain
messages into its scripts, what's to keep the government from
"persuading" the networks to include other types of
messages? I'm trying to stay clear from the slippery slope fallacy,
but I don't think it's too large a leap to imagine. And why would the government want to stop
at TV shows like "Beverly Hills 90210?" If you can
get TV shows to slip in certain government-approved messages,
why not try to influence the nightly news? Or The New York
Times? Or the Crossville Chronicle? Or the Cumberland
County Playhouse? Maybe an upcoming rendition of "Smoke
On The Mountain" will include a newly added scene in which
one of the characters has a bout with heroine addiction. The bottom line is that I don't like the idea
of creative people like script writers, producers and story developers
working with government's influence constantly on their minds.
I think it hinders the artistic process and provides the government
with a foothold into an area in which it has no business. (Not
that anything ever depicted on "Beverly Hills 90210"
truthfully could be called "artistic," but you get
the idea.) I'm not pro-drug, and am not anti-government
per se. I just think that the government which governs best governs
least. I doubt the Founding Fathers had this in mind. And yet
here we are the government takes another step and gets
even closer to you and your family. These are our tax dollars. These are our tax
dollars on drugs. Get the message? |