The Office of National Drug Control Policy, headquarters of the Above the Influence campaign, is the kind of kafkaesque governmental office that you’d expect to find in Catch-22. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, 1.2 billion dollars were spent between 1998 and 2004 on anti-drug campaigns, with no discernable effect. Turn on the TV, and you watch regular teenagers turn into pancakes from smoking pot. Go to Above the Influence’s website, and you can see the strangely offensive mock nature-documentary “Stoners in the Mist”. This campaign is the publicity front of a War on Drugs that ends up sentencing African-Americans 74%¹ of the time even though they only make up 13% of the population. Milo Minderbinder must be making a cut somewhere. Don’t get me wrong; these commercials are hilarious, and an important part of marijuana culture. But I’m sure 1.2 billion dollars could have gone to better effect than giving a few stoners a laugh.

Of course, anti-drug (read: anti-marijuana) commercials have always been a ridiculous manifestation of conservative reactionary control of certain wings of the government. But the “Above the Influence” campaign has been particularly active in culture warfare: one voiceclip targets indie rock, of all things, as a drug-related evil. One can just feel the close-minded terror of government bureaucrats lashing out at anything unfamiliar and vaguely smelling of patchouli, armed with millions of taxpayer’s dollars. In addition to the targets, the proposed threat posed has taken on something of a lunatic quality. Granted, they don’t have much to work with (marijuana has never killed anybody), and they have to convince kids who grew up in an age where trusting the government was a sure sign of foolhardiness; desparation was bound to creep in. Still, is my girlfriend really going to leave me for a straight-edge alien?

1. War on Drugs Unfairly Targets African-Americans, St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12 April 2000. ↩