Drug Czar aims to infiltrate Hollywood

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:56 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JULY 14, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Drug Czar aims to infiltrate Hollywood

It turns out Drug Czar and retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey wasn't content with paying off TV networks to slip subliminal "anti-drug" messages into the scripts of 109 (and still counting) episodes of entertainment programs like "E.R." and "Beverly Hills, 90210" -- even going so far as to preview the episodes and "suggest changes."

No, after that Orwellian scheme was exposed by the online magazine Salon, back in January, came the April revelation that at least six major magazines and newspapers had also met the Drug Czar's "matching requirements" under 1997 legislation that requires media outlets to "match" every dollar spent by the government on anti-drug ads.

The networks were loathe to give up valuable commercial time for the stipulated free "public service announcement or similar anti-drug message," you see. So Gen. McCaffrey's office accommodatingly allowed the networks -- and the magazines and newspapers -- to meet their "matching" requirement by merely running articles or entertainment programs which slipped "accurate depictions of drug use issues" into their supposedly non-advertising content, with readers or viewers none the wiser.

Need we ask who got to define "accurate"?

Would the TV producers earn a "credit" if they ran a report on the way a federal judge in California caused the death of author Peter McWilliams last month by depriving him of the medical marijuana (now legal under California law) which controlled his nausea from chemotherapy drugs? (McWilliams, who choked on his own vomit while taking a bath, was posthumously awarded the Champion of Liberty Award at the Libertariuan Party's national convention in Anaheim July 2.)

Somehow I doubt that's the kind of "accuracy" the Drug Czar's office has in mind -- any more than it would take seriously a magazine or newspaper applying for "credit" for a story which pointed out that the drug ethyl alcohol, re-legalized on a campaign promise by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Democrats in 1933 (how's that for "sending a message to the kids"?) causes thousands of times more disease, violence, social pathology, and premature death in this country than all the "controlled substances" targeted by Gen. McCaffrey's War on Drugs, combined.

But now comes a further revelation, in July 12 editions of the Los Angeles Times, that the Drug Czar planned to disclose in congressional testimony this week a scheme to also "leverage popular movies" into featuring these approved anti-drug messages.

Why, even the theater owners themselves may now be able to belly up to the federal trough -- just as though they'd run a 60-second "anti-drug" spot before a movie -- merely by running previews for films which have the won the Drug Czar's "seal of approval." ("They can submit it to our contractors, after the movie is completed, for review for credit," McCaffrey spokesman Bob Weiner told the Times.)

It's an open secret that producers already approach commercial sponsors to subsidize film production costs by eliciting payments for "product placement" -- it's unlikely to be just a coincidence when Nicholas Cage takes a swig of Pepsi these days, or Demi Moore lights up a Marlboro. But is this truly to be an open market?

If he's so anxious to have drug issues discussed, will Gen. McCaffrey help the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws pony up a few hundred grand to influence production of a Hollywood film about millionaire recluse Donald Scott of Malibu, shot in his home after his wife screamed for help from the kitchen at the sight of plainclothes cops busting in the doors at dawn in hopes of finding marijuana -- after the eager officers gathered at the gate with their bolt-cutters to review maps of the valuable property they were planning to annex if they found a single plant? (Scott died. No drugs were found. Parks police later let the Scott house burn down rather than allow fire engines to cross their land.)

Of course not. When Big Brother starts infiltrating our media to bribe the procurers into delivering propaganda messages, it's a one-way street. The general evidently envisions our film and TV industries playing the same role as those familiar Army indoctrination films in which smiling actors in tailored uniforms crack bad jokes and instruct the trainees in everything from the proper method for brushing one's teeth to the importance of avoiding VD-infected prostitutes. Eventually, no programming will be allowed that doesn't in some way "advance the interests of the state," and the notion that our "free press" can or should deliver us a healthy public debate featuring a diversity of viewpoints will evoke nothing but the kind of cynical chuckles once heard in the Soviet Union.

Producers and publishers who sell out our heritage of a free and skeptical press for such paltry payoffs should be exposed. Then, the same Congress which was once wise enough to forbid the Voice of America from broadcasting government propaganda inside America, should similarly put this Drug Czar out of the domestic propaganda business.

Either that, or we can stop struggling to help our kids understand those dusty old, hard-to-read documents by guys like Jefferson and Madison in eighth grade Civics class. Instead, we'll just hand out copies of Orwell's "1984."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

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Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

Drug Czar aims to infiltrate Hollywood