contemporary dope ads

I don't smoke cigarrettes, nor the funny variety. Stevenson's article (and the new anti-drug ad he comments on) gets it right: most the time, smoking dope leads to laziness, and here's his props for the blunt commercials (I think Orwell would approve of the clarity) that our tax dollars create:

Whatever you may think of its arguments, this spot is quite a departure for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Finally, an admission that using pot isn't necessarily calamitous. It's possible we're seeing this about-face only because previous scare-tactic ads were recently proved to increase drug use. But either way, I applaud the new, more truthful strategy. Lying is never what you want from your government (even if you've grown accustomed to it)...

Stevenson isn't too keen on recent Public Service Anouncements, saying that they, "have suggested that drug use leads to: 1) Shooting your friend in the head, 2) running over a little girl on her bike, and 3) helping the terrorists."

Stevenson asks two final questions: 1.) Will the ONDCP now retract its previous claims that pot is a dangerous gateway drug?; and 2.) If smoking pot is the safest thing in the world, does not lead to the use of harder drugs, and, worst case, causes you to veg out on a couch for several hours, why is it a criminal offense?

Final question, a bit more important because I, mft, thought of it: if America allows liquor stores to sell shitty pisswater, isn't that a gateway booze that leads those same individuals to consume worse kinds of hard liquor?

Also: if we can agree that banning certain "drugs" (what's known as the "illegal" variety) is more of a Conservative cause, wouldn't it make more sense for Conservatives to lobby for the legalization of these drugs? I mean, afterall, Liberals are the only ones who are going to buy them, smoke them, and stay on their sofas when elections roll around...