“Because of the clear and present danger of Schedule I and II drugs, the electronic news media should reinforce our negative evaluations of Schedule I and II drugs by depicting them as causes of social evils” is a statement that has been debated for years. Should the electronic news media be held responsible for the way that they depict drugs? People have com accustomed to automatically believing the things they see on television and the news. Due to the electronic news media’s extreme influence over the people who follow the media, there is some truth to the above statement. People are influenced by the views of the media, so the media should carefully decide the way they want to depict Schedule I and II drugs in their stories and broadcasts. In my opinion, the news media should take a negative stance towards drugs.

The electronic media has a great influence over the way the public sees any given subject. The influence that the media has over people is no different when it comes to their representation of drugs. The stances that the electronic media take in any certain situation are the same stances that most of the viewing public is also going to take. That is why th

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1. Szasz, Thomas. “Our Right to Drugs.” Syracuse University Press 1992.

e electronic media must carefully pick and choose their battles. When it comes to the war on drugs, it seems that the electronic media takes a pretty solid negative stance against drugs, especially Schedule I and II drugs. There are many ways that the electronic media can influence the views of the public. The main source of influence that the electronic media has at their disposal is their power of creating stories that can put the drugs in a positive or negative light. It is up to each individual media arm to decide how they want to depict the story. One thing is for certain though, if a media group runs a story portraying marijuana as an “evil” drug and that it should be completely cleaned off the streets, a majority of the people who saw the story would start to believe the same way as the media group about marijuana. The same goes for if a story runs about the pain killing effects and medical importance of morphine. The people that were exposed to the certain story would then start to look at morphine in a more positive light and begin to understand and accept some of the usefulness of the drug. These stories greatly influence the perception of drugs by the public. While the people who are watching these stories are still free to make their own decisions about drugs, the stories subjectively put thoughts and ideas about the substances in the viewer’s heads. What that means is that the story often times only gives you the information that they want you to know, subjectively keeping the other end of the story away from you. This allows them to put the drugs in a light that they choose. Rarely is there a story in which we learn both the negative and the positive effects of marijuana. We only get one side or the other. This puts the thoughts in the head of the viewer that the news group wants you to have. Basically, these stories are used by the electronic news media to push their thoughts and ideals about drugs onto the public. This is a very effective weapon in the war on drugs. Most people believe anything they see on television because that is how the new generation has been raised, that everything you see on television and in the newspaper and on the Internet is true, unless you dig a little deeper and do some research on your own to gather your own thoughts on a subject.. So by putting as much negative information about drugs out there on television, radio, and the Internet, people also start to develop, subconsciously or not, negative thoughts about the drugs. The electronic news media uses this advantage greatly in presenting their thoughts on

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