CANNABIS COLUMN - #29

Jon Gettman is a long time contributor to HIGH TIMES. A former National Director of NORML, Jon has a Ph.D. in public policy and regional economic development and consults with attorneys, advocates, and non-profits on cannabis related research and public policy issues. On October 8, 2002, along with a coalition of organizations, he filed a new petition to have cannabis rescheduled under federal law. This column will track that petition's progress.
Politics vs. Propaganda: A Matter of Trust

Politics appeals to self-interest, but, one hopes, in a way that promotes civic responsibility to the greater good of the community. Propaganda, according to historian Norman Davies, is the antithesis of all honest education and information. Propaganda and ignorance is what produced marijuana prohibition, and politics is the only remedy that can cure this archaic malady held over from the last century for lack of any better ideas to control the thriving cannabis market.

Politics presents the challenge of recognizing and appealing to different groups of citizens who will benefit from marijuana’s legalization and organizing them to support legislative efforts to replace prohibition with a regulatory scheme for cannabis in the United States.

Propaganda, aside from getting our nation into this mess, is not an effective tool for building widespread political support for marijuana reform. Most marijuana users are so offended by anti-marijuana propaganda that this point, at face value, is pretty obvious to most advocates of marijuana reform. Indeed, following NORML’s lead for over a generation, most reformers take great pride in basing their policy analysis, arguments, and advocacy on widely recognized academic standards for reporting data and the results of scientific research. In other words, reformers take pride from their dedication to honest education and information.

Political rhetoric, though, is often viewed with great license, even by those dedicated to advancing honest education and information. Some political operatives view their objective as stimulating controversy rather than nurturing consensus, and they take great license in inflaming public passions as a necessary part of mobilizing support and raising funds. Indeed, one characteristic of many enthusiastic novice political operators - the ambitious ones who think they know how the game is really played - is their ready embrace of propaganda as a shortcut to power and influence.

How can effective political rhetoric be distinguished from counter-productive propaganda? Propaganda has its theorists and grand practitioners; it has been studied for centuries. Davies presents five basic and widely recognized rules of propaganda that provide a fairly simple set of identifying characteristics.

The first rule of propaganda involves simplification -- regardless of the complexities of any subject, it can be reduced to a simple matter of good vs. evil, friend vs. foe.

The next rule should also be familiar; Davies labels it the rule of disfigurement and describes it as the use of crude smears and parodies to discredit the opposition.

The third rule involves transfusion, the misrepresentation of consensus values to further ones own goals.

The rule of unanimity - presenting one’s viewpoint as if it were widely held by every normal person - creates psychological pressure forcing skeptics to adopt a belief through what Davies refers to as psychological contagion.

The fifth and last rule concerns orchestration, endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.

It’s not difficult to understand how much marijuana prohibition relies on propaganda. Marijuana users are defined as a deviant group, derisively labeled in the name of addressing public concern about teenage access to the drug, a policy objective supported by every right thinking member of the community, and this consensus for a drug-free community is repeated over and over again in advertisements, political rhetoric, and policy pronouncements.

Advocates of marijuana legalization, though, need to be careful not to respond to prohibition’s appeal to hatred and prejudice with propaganda of their own. Since the medical marijuana issue is one of the most emotional conflicts facing marijuana advocates, it provides some of the best examples of propaganda’s temptations.

Opponents of medical marijuana are not evil, nor are they cruel and heartless. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has led the floor fight against efforts to prevent federal money from being used to prosecute patients whose medical marijuana use is legal under state law. On the other hand Frank Wolf has been a staunch supporter for international human rights and humanitarian efforts for years and represents a very conservative congressional district. Not only is it a crude smear to think of Congressman Wolf as a cruel and heartless man, it is also unlikely to be an effective way to persuade him to support the medical marijuana issue. Indeed, I live in this congressional district and Rep. Wolf is my representative in Congress. Propaganda such as this is not, at least in my opinion, an effective way to persuade voters in his District to oppose him.

Another propaganda trap for reformers is the notion that the public would support reform if they hadn't been duped by pro-prohibition propaganda. This trap has reformers believing that a public consensus for their proposals already exists, or alternately that the way to get the public to adopt their proposals is to pretend that they are already supported by every right-thinking individual. The result is a tactical focus on exposing the propaganda rather than a more effective focus on honest education and information that appeals to both self-interest and civic responsibility. Not only is this tactic a distraction, it's just not very effective over the long term.

Propaganda is very effective for fundraising purposes and for getting attention from the media, and for those reasons it is a very popular tool for political operatives because it allows them to create the appearance of success. Actually, for propagandists, the appearance is success. Obsession with propaganda is self-defeating for social movements over time because it transforms them into lost causes, where every obstacle is explained away by the conspiracy of the evil forces that make up the opposition. Propaganda creates an environment in which any appearance of success is credit to the propagandist while any obstacle or failure is because their opponents haven't played by the rules.

Propaganda has many temptations for anyone interested in changing marijuana laws, especially because, along with charismatic leadership, it appeals to the emotions. Marijuana reform, though, is something that is based on an appeal to the conscience and intellect. And a good thing this is because the public, which must be convinced to abandon marijuana prohibition, is far more receptive to appeals to their intellect than they are to appeals to their emotions. Not only is propaganda inconsistent with the values of marijuana users, it quite rightly invites skepticism on the part of the American public. Experience has established, in matters large and small, that while propaganda is not necessarily the characteristic of an evil enterprise it is rarely an indication of a reliable and trustworthy one.

Advocates of marijuana reform earn the public’s trust by choosing politics over propaganda, and that trust is essential to the success of efforts to legalize marijuana in the United States.

Jon Gettman writes the monthly “Cannabis Column.” He’s a contributor to HIGH TIMES and hightimes.com, and is the former executive director of NORML.