Maryland transit operators rejected an advertisement criticizing government animal tests in which monkeys are addicted to recreational drugs, claiming the ad promotes “prohibited” substances to minors.
Taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project is seeking to run a new ad campaign on trains and buses throughout Maryland, where the National Institutes of Health — the government’s top funder of primate testing — is headquartered.
The ad reads, “$6M in taxes for junkie monkeys? That’s bananas” and references current experiments funded by NIH in which monkeys are addicted to recreational drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. It also directs taxpayers to a site where they can urge Congress to cut funding for such research.
However, Vector Media, which handles advertising for both the Maryland Transit Administration and the city of Annapolis, declined the ad last week on behalf of both agencies at least in part on the grounds that it makes “prohibited” substances appealing to children, White Coat Waste Project told the Washington Examiner.
While they have not yet provided an explanation from the MTA, the company told White Coat Waste Project that its “contact at the MTA has rejected the design, but has sent it to the legal department for an official explanation on why it was rejected.” It further added that the city of Annapolis said, “We are declining this ad as it presents products prohibited from sale to minors and other persons under legal age in such a way as to appeal particularly to minors and others persons under legal age.”
Over the past 25 years, the NIH, which is under fire for spending transparency law violations in regard to its primate research, has sent over $6 million in grants to the United Kingdom for experimenters at the University of Bath that addict monkeys to heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. The project received $365,574 in FY19 alone.
“There is no legitimate reason why White Coat Waste Project’s non-graphic ads lampooning government experiments that hook monkeys on street drugs should be censored from the taxpayers being forced to pay millions for them,” Justin Goodman, vice president of Advocacy and Public Policy, told the Washington Examiner. “The National Institutes of Health, which funds these wasteful and widely-opposed tests, is based in Maryland, and taxpayers have a right to know how it’s spending their money.”
The group believes the ad’s rejection is a violation of their First Amendment rights and has referred the case to their attorney.
“We’ve had to sue Maryland transit operators for censoring White Coat Waste Project’s ads in the past, and we won,” Matthew Strugar, a Los Angeles based civil liberties attorney who represents the group in its First Amendment cases, told the Washington Examiner. “We’re not afraid to do it again. But it shouldn’t require a lawsuit. These transit operators should be able to follow the First Amendment without being sued.”
Last year, White Coat Waste Project successfully sued the MTA after it refused to run ads criticizing taxpayer-funded experiments on kittens at a Department of Agriculture laboratory in a Washington, D.C., suburb. The agency finally agreed to run the ads earlier this year, a month before the testing was shut down as a result of the ad campaign.
The NIH has been under pressure to curb its use of taxpayer-funded experiments on monkeys in recent months. In June, the House passed the FY20 funding bill for the agency, which included language directing it to produce a report for Congress that outlines “a detailed strategy and timeline for the reduction and replacement of NIH primate research with alternative research methods.”
UPDATE: A spokesperson for MTA told the Washington Examiner that “Vector Media incorrectly stated that ad was rejected” by the agency.
“The ad has not been rejected but is under legal review, and no decision has been made at this time,” the spokesperson said.
