Over at Slate, Seth Stevenson has a great piece up about those new, non-hysterical anti-pot ads that have been running recently. You know, the ones where kids acknowledge that pot’s not so bad — it won’t kill you, and it’s not a gateway drug — but that, really, there’s better stuff you could be doing with your life.

After years of campy “this is your brain on drugs” nonsense, finally we see a semi-reasonable message to kids about the realities of casual drug use. I’m not sure any type of advertising is likely to affect kids’ choices about drugs all that much, but this is certainly better than telling them blatant lies that ultimately just make them that much more suspicious of all authority.

Stevenson does get at the central dilemma of a drug-war-rhetoric climb-down, though:

Quick question, though, in light of this new marijuana glasnost: Will the ONDCP now retract its previous claims that pot is a dangerous gateway drug? And, logical next question (as others have noted): If smoking pot is the safest thing in the world, does not lead to the use of harder drugs, and, worst case, causes you to veg out on a couch for several hours, why is it a criminal offense? I eagerly await the ads addressing this conundrum.

While no politician is ready to take the bold steps necessary to end the War on Drugs, I think this sort of message coming out of the federal government itself represents a major turning point, where most everyone can see the underlying reality of the drug war’s failure. The question is what comes next.

UPDATE: Here’s the ad in question: