Remember those obnoxious Super Bowl ads which claimed that drug users were giving money to terrorists? The Libertarian Party has struck back as part of its "drug war strategy."

Print ads placed in the USA Today and the Washington Times on Feb. 26 showed a large photo of drug czar John Walters. Small text running over the center of his face read: "This week, I had lunch with the President, testified before Congress, and helped funnel $40 million in illegal drug money to groups like the Taliban."

The so-called drug war strategy is controversial within the LP. Many Americans already associate the LP primarily with its pro-legalization stance on drugs, often negatively or outside the context of the LP’s comprehensive platform, which favors maximizing both individual liberty and personal responsibility.

So, should the LP risk being pigeonholed as the pro-drug party — to the extent that it isn’t already — in order to exploit one of the few true wedge issues it has? Polls have shown increasing support for alternatives to the drug war, which the LP has opposed since its founding. And the medical marijuana movement is so popular that network sitcoms like "The Simpsons" are satirizing it.

I think that the strategy is both worth the risk as well as morally commendable. At this point, what does the LP have to lose? A few hundred locally elected officials? That’s not much of a risk. The odds against electoral success are very long. Even Ralph Nader is struggling to hold together his formerly burgeoning coalition.

Now is the time for the LP to be bold and, frankly, not concern itself so much with winning elections for the time being. If the LP survives only as a kind of pressure group that engages in media campaigns to support libertarian causes, that would be OK with me. Sure, it would mean I’d have to stop voting, but at least it would be doing some good instead of just being an ineffective, second-rate "third party."

In the meantime, get the facts on how the drug war finances terrorist activity.
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