Quick, what's the number-one threat to our nation's youth? I'll bet you didn't say smoking pot, and I wouldn't have guessed that either. But, apparently neither of us know as much as White House Drug Czar John Walters. Walters, in conjunction with Partnership for a Drug-Free America, has in the past few months released a set of four commercials that he says offer "tangible, real world examples of what can go wrong when teens use marijuana."In what probably is not a huge surprise to anyone, the Drug Czar seems to frown upon teen marijuana use (go figure). He makes this clear in the four ads, entitled "Concert," "Couple," "Den" and "Drive-Thru." All four are viewable at http://www.mediacampaign.org/mg/television.html.

"Concert" shows a kid smoking behind some kind of curtain at a concert and then getting arrested. The statement "Marijuana Can Get You Busted" is then shown on-screen, followed by "Harmless?" Fair enough. Marijuana can, indeed, get you busted. Just ask pretty much any member of the NBA's Portland Trailblazers.

"Couple" involves a girl and a guy smoking on a couch, and infers that the girl is about to be taken advantage of. Again, I have no real problem with this ad -- there's nothing wrong with telling teenage girls to stay away from weed when there are shady characters around.

"Den" is where things start getting ridiculous. Two kids are smoking in one's father's study. They're having a good time, just relaxing and making typical stoner remarks, when one of them opens up a desk drawer and pulls out a handgun. The other kid says "cool" and asks if it is loaded. The first kid replies no, and then a shot is heard and the camera fades to black. "Marijuana Can Distort Your Sense Of Reality" is shown, again followed by "Harmless?" Summing things up; two kids got high, and one shot the other. Right. Happens all of the time. I did not think commercials could get any more manipulative until I saw the next one.

In "Drive-Thru," there are several shots of a car filled with "high" kids pulling up to a drive-thru window. Each time they do, they make a pathetically unfunny response to the woman asking them for their order. This would seem to be the only area in which Walters really did his homework, by the way "high" kids are truly unfunny to non-stoned kids. The final shot has them realizing they have no money and speeding off. A little girl is crossing the driveway of the restaurant, however, and we hear a crash as the screen fades to black. "Marijuana Can Slow Your Reaction Time" is splashed across the screen, followed once again by "Harmless?" To summarize things, as I did for the last ad, a bunch of kids got high, so a little girl is most likely dead.

I find these ads infuriating. They are insidious in that you can't say that each situation could never happen, but at the same time the odds are so low as to make it almost neurotic to associate marijuana with such dire consequences. Should kids who are smoking weed be driving or playing with guns? Of course not. Does this make weed in itself a harmful substance? Nope. Drinking too much alcohol or caffeine can also make you a bad driver or make you more dangerous around a gun. So too can having a bad day, being tired, or a million other things. Yet few would argue being drunk (not counting binge-drinking) or having too much coffee to be inherently dangerous practices.

The fact that Walters has to rely on such manipulative, visceral imagery to try and get people not to smoke pot shows that he does not have much of an argument against it. If there are any objective, long-term studies linking occasional marijuana use to anything damaging, why not cite those? I need to make it clear here that I am not endorsing habitual marijuana use. I would never argue that smoking that often might not have some permanent effect -- we are, after all, dealing with a mind-altering substance, albeit a very mild one. But smoking weed occasionally simply is not that big of a deal. I know that there is such a stigma attached to marijuana use that this statement would enrage half the country (not at a Massachusetts liberal arts college necessarily, but in plenty of other places), but there really is not much of a reason to believe otherwise. And until there is, Mr. Walters, please do not exploit images of children being killed to further your completely subjective political and moral agendas.