The television ad, created by the Washington DC-based Marijuana Policy Project, will break tonight on ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates. It questions the rational of keeping marijuana illegal.
In the ad, two respectable-looking men discuss marijuana and beer, spoofing an earlier US commercial where two characters, Nick and Norm, discuss whether buying marijuana funds terror. The earlier ads were part of the US government's $185m (拢117m) anti-drug advertising campaign.
In the new version, Nick says: "If I buy a beer, that doesn't support terror, because beer is legal, right?"
Norm agrees, and then Nick concludes: "So what you're saying is if we make marijuana legal and regulate it like beer, it wouldn't support violence."
The ad finishes with the endline "Marijuana prohibition. Harmless?". It has a link to and a telephone number.
Robert Kampia, executive director of MPP, said: "Drug czar John Walters spent $185m of our tax money last year to lie to the American public with misleading, dishonest scare ads. Our ad tells the truth: Marijuana doesn't cause violence, but prohibition does -- by forcing marijuana into the unregulated criminal underground."
The group says that independent research shows that the latest advertising from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, has produced no evidence consistent with a desirable effect of the campaign on youth and, in fact, teens who see the ads often tended to move more in a pro-drug direction.
It is not the first time that pro-pot groups in the US have advertised. Last year, New York's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg found himself the unwitting star of an ad campaign in favour of relaxing the city's marijuana laws. The ad, created by NORML, quoted comments Bloomberg made where he admitted to not only smoking marijuana but enjoying it as well.
In the UK, ads such as the 1997 Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics campaign have focused more on the medical benefits of marijuana to people living with diseases such as multiple sclerosis and chronic arthritis.
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