Leonid Bershidsky warns of its dangers:
Perhaps propaganda is the most dangerous drug of all. The U.S. Congress appeared to understand the potentially corrosive effects back in the 1970s and 1980s, when it banned the dissemination on U.S. soil of government-funded media such as Voice of America, partly in an effort to prevent domestic propaganda (the ban is no longer in force). The no-holds-barred war of lies between the governments of Russia and Ukraine shows propaganda machines maintain their deadly effectiveness even today.
Governments’ power to influence public opinion should be restricted as tightly as the most dangerous drugs, and free media – where they still exist – need to pay special attention to how they relay government messages. Otherwise, when officials grow older and decide something was done wrong, their wisdom will fall on deaf ears.
Drug Czar Michael Botticelli recently stated that the marijuana legalization movement “sends the wrong message, particularly to the youth of our country.” But Jon Walker believes the real problem is the message sent by the government’s draconian drug policies:
To begin with there is the fact that the federal government keeps marijuana a schedule I drug, classifying it as having no accepted medical value despite significant evidence that it provides relief to patients with a range of conditions. By doing this the federal government is telling our young people that it is okay to completely disregard science if you don’t like the results. It also lets young people know their government doesn’t thinks relieving the suffering of the sick should be a priority.
The government also continues to spend billions of dollars and has arrested millions of Americans in our decades-long marijuana prohibition war, yet it has completely failed to stop marijuana from being widely used. From this young people learn the important lesson that you should never admit you made a mistake, no matter how expensive or destructive that mistake has been.
The Dish 