Remember those intellectually soft drugs-users-pay-terrorists ad campaign? The Office of National Drug Control Policy killed the spots because they were off-message, untrue, and ineffectual. The Partnership for Drug-Free America didn’t like them for being “off-strategy” — though that maybe more about Ogilvy and Mather doing the creative, which is usually the PDFA’s job. Most progressive/decriminalization groups think the campaign was misleading, as terrorists come from dysfunctional foreign policy, and not potsmokers. But they don’t like the idea of anti-drug campaigns anyway. The cited reason for killing the spots, though, was that they totally failed, just like all the other ONDCP campaigns.
Recall that in March 2002, O & M had to pay the GAO $1.8 million in fines for billing 3,100 hours of questionable work to the ONDCP in 1999 — and they still got the contract for the campaign, which started in February 2002. You can read the full GAO report from August 2001.
PS – All of this is paid for by the government, i.e. you.
a technology job is no excuse 