The White House Drug Czar's office has tumbled through a cascading set of warnings about the dangers of marijuana over the years. The drug that once would fry your brain or lead to heroin addiction has recently been downgraded to a cause of sloth.
The softer ads argue that while it might not kill you, pot will make you a couch potato and a good-for-nothing loser.
Now, the Drug Czar Office (currently run by acting chief Ed Jurith) is going one further: not only will marijuana sink you into hours of wasted time on your couch, you won't even be any good at video games while you're sitting there.
"Getting high affects your brain in ways that may directly influence your gaming ability," warns the Drug Czar's Web site, citing the impairment of "many of the skills required for winning a background, defeating an opponent, [and] beating games."
To dramatize how bad a stoner can be at video games, the site interviews a computer-generated character who laments the demise of a gamer friend of hers. "I used to have a good time with Lyle. We made a good team. He had skill. He had swiftness," she says. "Well, he used to, anyway. Then our last fight, Lyle decided to get high. And it was simply: sayonara skill, sayonara swiftness."
The 2009 budget allocates $100 million for the Drug Czar's media campaign.