Pubdate: Sat, 08 January 2000 Source: Tampa Tribune (FL) Section: Nation/World, p.15, Saturday Forum Copyright: 2000, The Tribune Co. Contact: http://www.tampatrib.com/ Forum: http://tampabayonline.net/interact/welcome.ht Author: Dennis Hans PARTNERSHIP IGNORES MOST HARMFUL, READILY AVAILABLE DRUG OF ALL. This is your brain (I'm holding an egg.) This is what President Clinton, Congress and the mis-named Partnership for a Drug-Free-America think of your brain's capacity to detect hypocrisy. (I'm squishing the egg.) In the most arresting television advertisement in the government's anti-drug media campaign, a young woman smashes dishes with a frying pan to indicate the hell a family goes through when a member is hooked on heroin. If she had swung only slightly less violently, she would have indicated the hell a family goes through when a member is hooked on alcohol. Nevertheless, the drug alcohol is excluded from the category "drug" for the purposes of the ad campaign. It's true that the campaign is restricted to illegal drugs, but alcohol is illegal for the primary target audience, kids. And kids use alcohol essentially for the same reasons they use other mind-altering substances. Alcohol is also the drug that children (and their parents) are most likely to abuse. It is also the drug that is heavily - and deceptively - marketed to Americans of all ages by the same advertising industry and networks creating and airing the "anti-drug" spots. DOES ANYONE HAVE a problem with this? Yes. Legitimate organizations seeking to reduce the harm caused by alcohol and other drugs - and by draconian, unequally enforced drug laws - have a problem with this. But there's nothing legitimate about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, or, as I prefer to call it the Partnership for a Drunken-Spree America. The partnership's de facto purpose is to ensure that the words "alcohol" and "drugs" are not linked in popular consciousness. If, as its name implies, the partnership is an anti-drug organization, and it collaborates with the government and networks on massive anti-drug campaigns, and these campaigns ignore alcohol, and the ads are interspersed among commercials glamorizing alcohol, then the implicit message is that alcohol is not a drug. Ah, but the partnership is not an anti-drug organization. It is an anti-illegal-drug organization. Its mission, as stated at its Web site (www.drugfreeamerica.org), "is to reduce the demand for illicit drugs in America through media communication." And a fine mission it is for an outfit that proudly declares that its "heart and soul" is the advertising industry, which labors mightily to increase the demand for potentially dangerous illegal drugs. The fact that alcohol is legal (for adults) and is enjoyed safely by tens of millions does not erase the approximate 100,000 annual deaths (compared with 14,000 for all illicit drugs combined) or the 12 million addicts and several million at-risk problem drinkers. The fact that alcohol has ripped a greater hole in our social fabric than all illicit drugs would seem to call for a massive partnership campaign promoting both abstinence and safe-drinking guidelines (no more than two drinks per day for adult men, one for women) for those who choose to drink. At the Web site, the Partnership boasts that it doesn't accept money from alcohol manufacturers. Left unsaid is that it did so until 1997. That's the sort of parsing one expects from the president, which perhaps explains his affinity for the Partnership. The Web site does contain valuable information about a variety of drugs, including alcohol. But the alcohol information appears to be a recent addition to cover the partnership's tail as "alcohol" is the last drug in an otherwise alphabetized list. Here are a few questions not posed at the partnership's Web site: Do drug treatment professionals award addicts of legal drugs gold stars for not breaking the law? Does little Johnny take solace in the fact that it is alcohol, not illegal crack, that his dad takes before beating him and his mom? Do parents turn cartwheels when they learn their frat-boy son's cause of death was chug-a-lugging booze rather than mainlining heroin? If you're not affiliated with the partnership, you probably answered no. If we could just get our networks and statesmen into treatment for their addiction to booze industry money, they might emerge clear-headed enough to see the value of incorporating alcohol in a revamped anti-drug campaign designed by a legitimate organization skilled in the art of honest communication, not cynical manipulation. Such a campaign would: o Make clear the generic term "drugs" includes alcohol; o Devote the most attention to the drug wreaking the most havoc; o Force the alcohol industry and its media beneficiaries to acknowledge they are in the drug-promotion business and thus part of the problem; o Make the campaign relevant to more people, because Americans are much more likely to live with or know an alcoholic than a pothead, coke fiend or junkie; o Deliver realistic and subtle messages acknowledging that drug use doesn't necessarily lead to abuse, that some drugs are more dangerous than others and that patterns of usage of less dangerous drugs such as alcohol and marijuana help to determine the likelihood of later abuse; o Emphasize that the earlier in life one starts using even the less dangerous drugs, the greater the risk of abuse or addiction. Children and their parents just might appreciate the honesty. Such messages just might promote more rational discussion than an actress smashing dishes with a frying pan. [Dennis Hans is a writer and teacher in St. Petersburg.] - --- MAP posted-by: allan wilkinson