The War on the War on Drugs

Cevin Soling – 2002 – USA  

William Burroughs long ago predicted that a hoax called a “war on drugs” would be used as a pretext to begin stripping citizens of their civil liberties, and that this “war” would guzzle tax dollars indefinitely even though it would make no actual progress in discouraging casual drug use.  “All the people that you hate hate drugs, so you know that they’re great.”  So goes a line from the song ‘Drugs Are Cool’ during the opening credits.  Cevin Soling’s non-narrative film is a contemptuously sarcastic assault on government and media anti-drug programs in the past few decades.  Between histrionic vintage ads and new comic vignettes mixing facts and vicious satire, the film will likely delight anyone who, like me, remembers feeling annoyed and insulted in school, (rather than scared straight), by the moronic campaigns of police, teachers, politicians and vapid celebrities to drill into us that drugs were bad.  Soling takes special aim at the hypocritical acts of lawmakers desperate to appear pro-active and who have consequently landed us in a post-Bill of Rights era in which people are coerced into signing pledges and submitting to urine tests and arbitrary searches and seizures by bored traffic cops.  It’s of interest to note that a hard line on drugs is pretty much the only issue upon which Democrats and Republicans are in complete agreement.  The ironic, inflammatory approach of Soling’s film is admirable because it diverges from the predominant polemic documentary style – á la Michael Moore – that attempts persuasion with endless talking points.  By pretending to advocate drug use willy-nilly, the film points out the patronizing absurdity of propaganda tactics that are typically used by activists on every hot-button political issue.