So according to the warped “logic” of the Office for National Drug Control Policy, if you smoke pot, then you support terrorism. Well, if they’re going to carry some thoughts out on those kinds of tangents, I have a few commercials of my own.

Here’s one: Suzie wants to look nice on the first day of school, so she buys a new pair of tennis shoes. The company Suzie gave her money to operates sweatshops. The sweatshops owned by the company, from where Suzie bought her shoes, enslaves women and children. Husbands of these women in the factory of the company Suzie gave her money to start a revolution and kill Suzie’s grandmother, who was visiting the country with sweat shops.

Or how about this one: George gives $100 to a major political party. The party George gave the money to makes nuclear warheads, since their rule is maintained by instilling fear into people. The weapons made by the party that George gave his money to destroy a major foreign city. The country attacked by the weapons made by the party George gave his money to retaliates, and attacks George’s town, killing his family.

Are these consequences that ads should tell people their harmless actions cause? Are these children killers?

Of course not.

And, obviously, smoking pot is not like committing terrorist acts.

What’s sickest about these ads is they show the impact terror is having on people’s lives in this country. Using such rhetoric to stop people from utilizing harmless substances shows just how far the campaign against terror is trying to go, just how willing people are to accept it, and how quickly they retaliate against what they don’t understand.

Unfortunately, this country is turning back to repeat its own history. If you blur your eyes, America now looks almost like it did in the early ’70s, during one of its deepest troughs – littered with political inefficiency, internal unrest, incoherent foreign policy and confusion.

Now, as 30 years ago, we’re trying to fight invisible enemies. This time it’s terrorism instead of communism, but still, it’s something that cannot be touched or felt, only battled in deserts and jungles to questionable and insubstantial ends.

People are scared, not just by their own imaginations, but by everything from special news reports to anti-drug advertisements. America has again been convinced into thinking at any minute, with every step, terror can and will happen. It can be triggered by even the simplest daily actions.

The campaigns are again led by another conservative president calling on an imagined majority, whether it be “Silent” as it was in the days of Nixon, or “Moral” as it is today. Both are too afraid to speak up when they disagree and too eager to solve their problems with force.

For this reason, the country is as divided, especially on the left, as it was in the late Nixon era, swarming with causes and problems to be solved, desperate with voices to be heard and sides to be taken. Now, though, there is added desperation: the mistakes of old will not be repeated, that draft cards won’t have to be burned in protest, and that authority will not have to be constantly questioned.

Sadly, it’s a time when the main enemies this country chooses to battle have no concrete face or form – only opposition, as various targets are chosen to stand for what we feel the need to conquer.

Like it was 30 years ago, now is a time when problems that have lingered far too long are coming to a head, a time when fingers must be pointed.

Unfortunately, both then and now, they are too often pointed in the wrong directions.

John Ross is a junior in comparitive studies and can be reached for comment at [email protected].