Chapter 6

Chapter 6 "SMACK IS BACK" When Presidents and the Press Collude, the Scares never stop, focuses on the war on drugs and covers drug scares, drug illegal drugs, addiction, drug policies, and the President's, median involvement. To begin, Glassner uses old examples to show that some scares fade from the public mind and that others stay around. This leads into the topic for the chapter, which is the war on drugs, and shows that it has to stay power because "U.S. Presidents and media organizations worked in unison to promote fears of drug abuse."(Glassner 131) Drugs abuse is a problem but we go about in the wrong way. "Sensationalism rather than rationality has guided the national conversation," explains Glassner. This causes a waste of money and happens because people are misinformed about which drugs are used, and who actually uses those drugs. The team-up between President and Media started with President Nixon's request to get TV producers to help with "curtailing illegal drugs"(Glassner 132). The TV producers agreed and stories about illegal drug abuse increased. After Nixon, the idea that illegal drug abuse is a national threat has only gone up thanks to the coverage done by the media. A study was done by David Fan, a professor at the University of Minnesota, which correlated the number of news articles related to a drug crisis to variations in public opinion from 1985 all the way through 1994. The differences were quite drastic, bouncing in some years from only one in 20 Americans ranking drugs as the number one most important problem and at other times 2 out of 3 thought it was the most important problem. One reason for the focus on illegal drugs is that it allows the government to put off blame. This can come from the 1870s Chinaman/ opium den crisis in San Francisco, note it wasn't actually a crisis; or from the 1980s when urban illnesses were skyrocketing and Crack was announced as the only cause. The next subsection rambles on about the media and how they don't focus on America's drug problem logically but how they put effort into making a story rather than attributing to fixing the problem at hand. Another subsection titled "Good Numbers Gone Bad" (Glassner 141) talked about a study which found 23.5 percent of children knew someone who used illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine, and LSD. contrary to this, media switched the statistics to say that the children themselves have used the drugs not that they knew someone using the drugs. According to Glassner "Drug scares are promoted primarily by three means: presidential proclamations, selective statistics, and poster children. The first two posit a terrifying new trend, the last give it a human face."(143) In other words, the first two are an ethos ploy while the last is a pathos-driven punch in the face. The subsections about roofies that end the chapter are only there to show that the media scare cycle continues and will continue with not only drug abuse but other topics as well.

Article of Relevance:

The Article I chose came from History Stories, which is apart of the history channel, and was written by Nick Schou on June 16th, 2017. Schou also the author of the book, Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb. The article focuses on the history of the drug problem in the U.S. Stated at the beginning of the article, drug overdoses have claimed more lives the car accidents and guns. Also saying that the deaths had jumped by 20% from 59,000 to 65,000 in 2016.  The purpose of this statement is that it shows the audience how dire the problem is. Part of the information came from the New York Times so as we've seen from the Culture of Fear that news outlets are not the best place to obtain information.  The second paragraph plays to the audience's pathos, logos, and ethos. By describing that different groups with varied opinions think the War on Drugs started by Nixon was a failure, Schou develops his arguments ethos; it also incorporates the reader's logos and pathos because they feel the sentiments of the groups involved; the law enforcement, economists, and civil rights organizations. This is logical also because people as a majority think it failed and this causes the undetermined to shift to their side of the argument. After these initial allegations, Schou starts to talk about the history of the U.S drug problem and pushes a lot of the blame on the CIA and DEA making his argument less sturdy and he starts to sound like a conspiracy theorist by the end. The last paragraph breaks this trend and he states his call to action and promos his book.