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 () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to 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 () 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

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