H_K

This rant is about the anti-marijuana ads on the television. The three ads that I am thinking of are: the one that shows a baby about to fall in a pool and drown, some swimmers at a meet that are missing one of their teammates, and a basketball player that gets thrown off the team because he smokes marijuana I guess. The first two are so stupid that I almost cannot explain how stupid they are. They are so completely worthless in terms of convincing semi-intelligent people that marijuana is a bad thing. The serious line that is supposed to make you think at the end of each commercial is: "Just tell the parents you let the baby drown because you were getting high", and , "Just tell your teammates you missed the meet because you were getting high". "Because you were getting high" could be replaced with "because you were baking cookies" in each example without any ill effects. And yet baking cookies is perfectly legal. Something has to be done; swimmers are prevented from participating in swimming meets and babies are drowning all over because of people baking cookies. This shows that the commercials' content had nothing to do with how bad marijuana is. The last one is just as stupid, but in a different way. This commercial is basically saying "marijuana is wrong and very bad because it is against the law". This is circular logic at best. What kind of message is this sending to our youth?: Do not in any way question any form of authority because what the government says is always right. That is what it is saying. If anything, these ads encourage me to get high because in my mind I'm thinking, "That's the worst they have against getting high? And none of it is even relevant to marijuana except the fact that it is illegal."

~author unknown