Drug Czar John Walters and groups such as Freevibe have stepped up the campaign to prevent children from using drugs. This year a total of $180 million will be spent by the federal government to pay for commercials that Walters said give viewers “tangible, real-world examples of what can go wrong when teens use marijuana.”

The money will be wasted. The government and some groups are not educating the public with the ads, they are trying to scare the public with far-out propaganda.

First things first. I want to keep kids off drugs as much as anyone, whether it’s marijuana, nicotine or alcohol. Their bodies cannot handle it and they are probably not mature enough to use them anyway. By attacking these ads, I am not endorsing child drug use, but somehow, someone will accuse me of doing just that.

The latest “real life” situation is the most ridiculous of any yet. Freevibe is the organization behind it.

Two young boys are sitting around smoking a water bong in a parent’s office. As they are talking, one sitting behind a desk finds a hand gun.

He picks it up and the other boy, sitting across from him, asks if the gun is loaded. The kid with the gun points at the other boy, says no and pulls the trigger. Turns out the gun was loaded after all. The ad then reads marijuana “distorts reality.”

This is insane. How often does this happen? Thanks for the “tangible” example, Walters. You probably saved countless lives. Wrong.

That situation showed something a little worse than a distortion of reality — that showed a kid who didn’t respect a gun. They threw pot in there to scare some idiot into believing that if their kid smokes pot, they might shoot someone.

It’s brainwashing of a sort. They are associating pot and guns with one another. We all know they go hand in hand, drugs and guns. All the commercial needs to be complete is a hooker.

The fact is, the situation shown is probably not going to happen. When someone smokes pot, their reality isn’t distorted in that sense. Anyone who has smoked weed can tell you the last thing on your mind when you get high is picking up a gun and pulling the trigger. Something to think about is another negative side effect the government has told us about — severe paranoia. According to their info, that kid should have been too scared to pick the gun up anyway.

How about the commercials that link smoking a damn joint to supporting terrorism?

If any one is politicizing the war on terror it is the Office of National Drug Control Policy. We all remember the Super Bowl ad that told us if we use drugs we might support terror.

There is a new one out that tries to hit home a little harder.

This commercial starts showing a guy named Dan and his joint.

Then the dealer Dan bought the joint from. Then the smuggler that smuggled the weed to the dealer. And finally, a family that was murdered by Dan’s cartel when they got in the way.

It isn’t Dan’s fault those people were killed. Some one else would have smoked that joint if he wouldn’t have. If we want to start placing blame on people other than the killers, let’s look at Walters himself. If the drug wasn’t illegal, there wouldn’t need to be a cartel in the first place.

What we have here is a government that wants us all to believe what isn’t true. And it will backfire on them hard-core. When these kids we are trying to keep off drugs realize they were fed a bunch of crap, they won’t listen to the things they should know. Things that are true.

So how do we keep kids off drugs? Tell them the truth.

Not all the commercials we’ve seen lie. In one a narrator tells how upset a kid’s parents will get if they find out. This is a good idea. Most kids don’t want to be in trouble with their parents and parents tend to get upset when their kids use drugs. It’s all true.

I have even come up with a commercial idea myself. Remember, I am worried about children. Marijuana use at a young age is much, much more likely to lead to a dependency on the drug. Explain to them why — and here’s the kicker, marijuana is more addictive for junior high kids than cocaine is, according to an article on NewScientist.com. That might actually make some one think twice about smoking at such a young age.

The point is we need to educate kids to understand they shouldn’t use drugs, not try to scare the crap out of the American public.

Zach Calef is a junior in apparel

merchandising design and production from Cedar Rapids. He is a member of the Daily’s editorial board.ÿ