Fox news article
NEW YORK - Smoking a joint, sporting a leather jacket and donning dazzling jewelry may be more than acts of mere overindulgence - they may actually be funding terrorism.
That's the accusation made by some, though the legitimacy of those charges has become somewhat controversial.
The issue first surfaced soon after Sept. 11, with reports that Usama bin Laden had invested in a number of legitimate businesses, which in turn were helping fund the operation of his Al Qaeda organization. The question simmered until Super Bowl Sunday, when a government-funded anti-drug campaign aired a controversial ad directly linking casual drug use to the funding of terror groups.
The ad, presented by the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, was part of a larger promotional campaign to push the connection between drug use and terrorism. In one print ad, a wayward girl gazes out from the page, her thoughts printed across her face: "Last weekend I washed my car, hung out with a few friends and helped murder a family in Colombia. C'mon, it was a party."
Critics of the Bush administration's drug policy immediately slammed the ads. Linking casual drug use to terrorism was a "ludicrous stretch," said Ethan Nadleman, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Roughly 50 percent of 18-year-olds have tried an illegal drug at least once," he said. "Is Bush accusing 50 percent of American teens of being accomplices to terrorists?"
When I first saw this ad on television, I thought it was completely absurd. To say that using drugs funds terrorism is to say that any American that has experimented with an illegal drug is a terrorist in the making. I guess that would include our present President since it has been rumored that he had a cocaine habit back in the day.
Partnership for a Drug Free America is a lobby for pharmaceutical companies. Basically, they don’t want you high on weed; they want you high on Zanax, Prozac and Valium. Everyday our television is plagued with commercials for more and more pharmaceutical drugs (with those awful side effects like constant diarrhea and headaches). The pharmaceutical industry is the biggest pusher of drugs in this country, making more money than any weed or crack dealer ever could. Legally. Understand something my friends, it is more lucrative to treat a disease than it is to cure it. Please keep that in mind. Keep in mind that it’s these same pharmaceutical companies that donate big bucks to campaign funds at election time. The Dope Man has no way to compete with that. His money cannot legally grease palms.
I’ve gone off on a tangent here. I find these particular commercials (drugs and terrorism) to be totally offensive. Especially since the American drug trade is what funds covert operations and counter-intelligence activities in other countries. You don’t think they’d honestly tell you that your tax dollars were spent to assassinate foreign dignitaries did you? Don’t believe for a moment that the government is not getting its cut of drug money. Manuel Noriega was once asked why he didn‘t stop shipping drugs into our country. His response? “Tell America to cure her habit.”
There is no “war” on drugs. America cannot go to war against herself. Please understand that young men in the ghetto do not have the planes, ships and trains that it takes to ship the large volumes of drugs that are traded in the ghetto. Understand that in the 70’s, as part of Cointelpro and in an effort to neutralize members of the Black Panther Party, large amounts of heroin were moved in Oakland. It’s coming from somewhere people. You mean to tell me a country this big with a military the size of ours can’t control its borders to prevent drugs from coming in the country? How many of you have crossed the border from San Ysidro, California into Tijuana. How many of you have crossed back over from TJ into San Ysidro and been waved through without even showing any ID? I’ve done it plenty of times, carrying more bags coming back into the country than I had when I left. No one even checked to see what I had.
And now everyone is jumping on the terrorist bandwagon. Everything is about being proud to be an American and anti-terrorist. More propaganda from the powers that be to work our fellow countrymen into a frenzy against a common enemy.
So if I’m to understand this ad correctly, my purchasing a dime bag of weed is what helped Osama bin Laden fly four commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania? You mean it had nothing to do with his training by the CIA, lax airport security, the failure of first NORAD and then the FAA and even our own Air Force to do their jobs?
You mean Lil Pookey who sells me the weed on the corner of Martin Luther King and Lake Mead takes all the money he makes from selling dime bags on that hot ass corner and gives it to terrorists? You mean Big Rome, who fronts Pookey the weed at 50 dollars an ounce gives his cut of the money to terrorists too? You mean Andre, who is the big man behind the entire operation, having bitches bring the shit into Vegas from California on the Greyhound isn’t really spending the money on those 22s he just stuck on his 2002 Escalade? He’s giving all his ends to Osama too?
Yeah, I believe that shit.
