Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005
Subject: #298 White House Illegal Propaganda About Drugs
WHITE HOUSE ILLEGAL PROPAGANDA ABOUT DRUGS
*********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE*************************
DrugSense FOCUS Alert #298 – Monday, 10 Jan 2005
This past Thursday, the Government Accountability Office cited the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Bush
administration for distributing phony prepackaged news reports that
constituted illegal “covert propaganda.”
This is the second finding by the GAO against the White House in the
past eight months. In May, the GAO concluded that the Department of
Health and Human Services violated two federal laws with similar fake
news reports touting the administration’s new Medicare drug benefit.
The U.S. federal government spends over $20 billion dollars a year on
the War on Drugs. With that much of an investment, our federal leaders
owe us honest and accurate information about drugs, drug use patterns
and the best public responses to both. That can be accomplished
without the ONDCP having to prepackage their own in-house faux news
stories and persuading television news organizations to present them
as news, without indicating the source.
Please consider writing a short, succinct Letter to the Editor to the
newspapers listed below.
Additional articles or opinion items on this issue may show up at this
link in over the next few days http://www.mapinc.org/topics/propaganda
Thanks for your effort and support.
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do
**********************************************************************
Please click the following links for the articles and editorials we
are aware of at the time this alert is being written:
Articles:
Washington Post, Friday, 7 Jan
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n029/a02.html
New York Times, Friday, 7 Jan
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n030/a02.html
Boston Globe, Friday, 7 Jan
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05.n044.a08.html
Editorials:
Courier-Journal (KY), Saturday, 8 Jan
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05.n049.a01.html
Asheville Citizen-Times (NC), Saturday, 8 Jan
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05.n039.a02.html
**********************************************************************
Additional suggestions for writing letters to the editor are
at:
Writer’s Resources http://www.mapinc.org/resource/
**********************************************************************
PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER
Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list (sentlte@mapinc.org) if you are subscribed, or by
E-mailing a copy directly to MGreer@mapinc.org if you are not
subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others
can learn from your efforts.
Subscribing to the Sent LTE list (sentlte@mapinc.org) will help you to
review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.
To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see
http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form
**********************************************************************
Prepared by: Stephen Heath, MAP’s Media Activism Facilitator
= Please help us help reform. Send drug-related news to
editor@mapinc.org