Urgent Alert (9/29/03) From Drug Policy Alliance: Please read this post and be prepared to call your Congressman tomorrow (Tuesday). In a last minute effort to keep money and power flowing through the Drug Czar's office, House Republican leadership are playing political games to push a bill that would re-authorize funding for failed 'drug war' programs. Just scheduled for tomorrow (September 30th), the vote is clearly designed to keep opponents from voicing alarm. They're also trying to bring the bill up under a process known as "suspension of the rules" which limits debate to less than an hour and prohibits Representatives from offering amendments to improve the bill. The drug war bill (HR 2086), known as the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act, provides five more years of funding for the Drug Czar's office and its campaign to arrest drugs users. Already, the Drug Policy Alliance has worked with a number of groups to remove as many of the extreme provisions from the bill as we could. But the bill still authorizes the White House to spend over a billion dollars on anti-drug television ads - the same ads ridiculed by the public and shown to be ineffective by the government's own studies. It also contains no protections to ensure that the drug czar cannot use taxpayer money to campaign against state medical marijuana ballot measures he personally doesn't like. If only 146 (out of 435) Representatives vote against the bill the House Republican leadership will be forced to bring the bill up under a more democratic process that will allow amendments to improve it. Call before 6pm (EST) on Tuesday. Tell the receptionist, "I'm calling to urge my Representative to vote against HR 2086 when it comes up under suspension of the rules. Among other things, HR 2086 allows the drug czar to spend taxpayer money to influence local and state elections. By voting no, the Representative can ensure that the bill will be brought up under a process that allows amendments to improve it." Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard for free at 1-800-839-5276. (They can also tell you who your Representative is if you're not sure. You can also find out who your Representative is at the Drug Policy Action Center. The LA Times has more important information about the ONDCP's ad campaign in their editorial: Anti-Drug Pitch Goes Wide Drug czar John P. Walters has mismanaged the media campaign in other ways -- using taxpayer dollars to directly attack state medical marijuana programs and ballot initiatives, for instance. This spring, Walters boasted to Congress about a study conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (which, in a blatant conflict of interest, helps produce the campaign's ads). The "good news," he said, was the study's conclusion that "40% of teens said that anti-drug advertising made them less likely to try or use drugs." A more independent study released by the University of Pennsylvania this year not only found "no evidence of a positive effect," it concluded that teens who saw the ads "tended to move more markedly in a 'pro-drug' direction in their attitudes over time." Sermons to teens can often have a boomerang effect, leading them to dismiss the real dangers the sermons are railing against. That, however, is not the lesson Walters took home from the Pennsylvania study. When its skeptical results came in, he opted not to renew the university's contract. Turning a blind eye to unwelcome facts is no way to run an effective anti-drug campaign. The entire process of the ONDCP re-authorization in Congress has been one of the Drug Czar trying to sneak things into the legislation. TalkLeft has more background here.