Tune in to progressive talk on AM 1090, and you may expect ads promoting Hempfest this weekend, but you might not expect ads from Bush’s Drug Czar. But the White House drug ads are airing, so Pat Craig, a regular listener and 53-year-old grandfather, is on a mission: “I want them to stop calling themselves progressive or stop running those ads.”

One of the blurbs irking Craig portrays a talking MP3 player, which sounds like a young African-American man, warning parents their teenagers can access “blogs and podcasts and stuff like that. People are talking about everything you can imagine out there,” the voice says, “and a lot of times there are drugs involved… Talk to your kid and check out what he’s loading up.” The 30-second spot wraps up with the requisite tag that the message is sponsored by the ONDCP—the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The ad’s content isn’t particularly offensive to the liberal ear. But the ONDCP, which it promotes, could give pause to progressives like Craig. In the past several years, the office has spent millions on controversial ad campaigns that link pot with terrorism and dehumanize pot smokers (the campaigns actually caused an increase in drug use among young people according to the Government Accountability Office). But what has set Bush’s ONDCP apart from the office under previous administrations are federally funded campaigns to quash progressive drug law reform measures. Most locally, Drug Czar John Walters, the ONDCP director, attempted to thwart Seattle’s Initiative 75, which made marijuana possession Seattle’s lowest enforcement priority in 2003, by holding a press conference in town days before the vote to call the measure a “con.”

“There’s nothing progressive about prohibitions in general,” says Pat Craig on the phone. “The war on drugs is a war on black people, black men in particular,” he says, although he is white. “The [radio hosts] always say how can we can help is to help the advertisers. How can we help this advertiser? We help them with our taxes whether we like it or not.”

In defense of AM 1090’s apparent hypocrisy (the banner on their Web site proudly depicts a bottle of wine and a cup of coffee next to a sign reading “Keep Left), the station runs lots of government public service announcements, such as warnings about exposure to mercury and second-hand smoke. This may be part of a bundled package. However, AM 1090 didn’t return calls to explain why they include the drug ads or if station executives are considering Craig’s request to pull them.