They are simply exacerbating the Problem

NORML - the advocacy group for the legalization of marijuana - has just released figures that appear to be derived from a credible source, which demonstrate that minors who are exposed to the most contents stemming from the government sponsored ad campaigns that are targeted toward children - developed and deployed as a mechanism intended to decrease the use of marijuana among adolescents - actually has the polar opposite impact: Apparently, the more children are exposed to the adds; the more likely the child is to use marijuana.

Now, of course, there are multiple explanations for this, such as the adds are reaching the targeted audience - children more likely to use marijuana, with which to begin. Consequently, we should not be too quick to conclude that the adds themselves are causing the elevated rates of marijuana usage. So this is not definitive evidence that the marketing campaign is the antecedent to the elevated rates of marijuana use among its audience; however, this is an indication of how poorly our money is being spent by these government agencies who take it upon themselves - impervious to direct democratic processes - to use money allocated to it by Congress for these insanely stupid projects - i.e., curtailing marijuana use - without any sufficient foresight into whether their programs have any chance for success.

First off, I fail to see why money would be spent attempting to curtail marijuana use in the first place. If my kid - not to indicate that I actually have any - was using marijuana and only marijuana, I would be quite pleased. Therefore, why do we not implement a marketing campaign endorsing the use of marijuana as a safe alternative to harder drugs, which from my own painful experiences, I can conclude in hindsight that I would have been much better off deploying such a strategy rather than elevating my narcotic consumption to more potent and more damaging drugs. In fact, I would rather see my hypothetical children using marijuana rather than, even, alcohol. For those of us familiar with driven while smoking pot, we already know that the only immanent threat from such a combination results from driving too slowly and too cautiously, causing other drivers to take chances when passing us.

The Reason why we would not want to implement my add campaign proposal - iterated above - is because we are not knowledgeable of all of the possible unintended consequences!!!

To use an example, Evangelical who have their teenage daughters take these ridiculous chastity vows are, unwittingly, contributing to increased rates of anal sex engaged in by adolescent girls. In other words, teenage girls who take these vows have, apparently, found a loophole in the contract by circumventing vaginal sex by having anal sex instead. Of course, anal sex is far more dangerous - in respect to the communicable diseases that can be transferred - than vaginal sex, indicating that the chastity vows are placing adolescent girls at a higher risk for acquiring HIV.

This is the problem with these attempts at engineering society: There are always too many contingencies to take into consideration if one is to actually know before hand the consequences of his or her implementation of social policies undertaken for reasons of adjusting the behaviors of others to fit his or her moral sensibilities. As a result, perhaps, a moratorium is in order for all tax payer financed projects - engaged in by officials not directly accountable to tax payers - designed to modify the behaviors of the people, who - ironically - are financing their own engineering.

Russell Cole [send him email]

Tags: government, government waste, marijuana, norml, Russell Coles Blog, social policies, waste
Categories: Commentary, Russell Cole's Blog
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