Pubdate: Tue, 12 Mar 2002
Source: Salon (US Web)
Copyright: 2002 Salon
Contact:  http://www.salon.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/381
Author:  Janelle Brown
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

SAYING NO TO PROPAGANDA

Critics say the government's new anti-drug campaign is reactionary and 
moralistic. Worse, it may not even work.

This is your brain on drugs.

Just say no. What's your anti-drug? D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.

Billions have been spent on catchy slogans and flashy branding to make the 
rejection of drugs as appealing as the consumption of candy.

But have the dollars devoted to educating, cajoling, pleading and 
frightening us away from drugs done the job? Even those who make the ads 
admit a limited return on this investment: Teenagers see anti-drug ads 2.7 
times a week, according to the government's numbers.

And yet 54 percent of all teens try drugs before they graduate from high 
school.

Propaganda from the War on Drugs was supplanted by dispatches from the War 
on Terrorism during the waning months of 2001. But last month, the Office 
for National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) found a way to marry the two 
battles in its latest anti-drug campaign, which equates drug use with 
financing terrorists. At the same time, the Partnership for a Drug Free 
America debuted its own ambitious anti-Ecstasy crusade entitled "Ecstasy: 
Where's the Love?"

This new offensive is fueled by serious money.

Congress has allocated more than $1 billion for anti-drug advertising over 
the next five years; $180 million will be spent this year alone, and that's 
merely the quantifiable sums (uncountable sums have been donated in free 
airtime and ad creation). Although advertising demands only a tiny portion 
of the government's total anti-drug budget, it's considered the cornerstone 
of the War on Drugs -- even though there is little proof that anti-drug ads 
really work. In fact, there is evidence that some anti-drug ads don't work 
and that others even (unintentionally) encourage drug use, according to the 
newest research.

But the most vocal critics of the government's new anti-drug advertising 
haven't focused on the questionable efficacy of the ads. Instead, they have 
accused the Bush administration of using the War on Drugs to push a broad 
and moralistic political agenda, while overlooking community-based 
approaches to drug abuse.

Rather than offering real solutions, they claim, the drug-terror campaign 
simply fans drug hysteria in the course of painting a new administration's 
face and philosophy on the War on Drugs.

Can an ad campaign that ostensibly seeks to warn teens away from drugs 
serve as political propaganda? Perhaps, if you subscribe to the idea that 
good advertising can sell anything to anyone.

Would this matter if the ads in question, regardless of their political 
agenda, managed to make a dent in drug abuse?

Maybe not. But so far, that appears to be the problem. Advertising can be 
used to create habits and sustain them, but, when it comes to drugs, it 
isn't necessarily an effective tool in snuffing them out.

Anti-drug propaganda, both government-funded and privately sponsored, has 
existed since the 1930s (think "Reefer Madness"), but it wasn't until 
cocaine -- and then, crack cocaine -- became a national epidemic that 
federally funded anti-drug advertising as we know it was born. Nancy Reagan 
launched the memorable "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s, at the height 
of a cocaine "epidemic" that was galvanizing concerned parents and 
authorities; her "Just Say No" advertisements, bumper stickers and T-shirts 
were ubiquitous. Then, in 1987, a collective of advertising professionals 
created the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, hoping to do pro-bono work 
as a private contribution to the War on Drugs, and began peppering the 
airwaves with their own anti-drug advertising. The goal was to "decrease 
demand for drugs by changing societal attitudes which support, tolerate or 
condone drug use." The idea was to condition kids to reject drugs, using 
the same branding and market-testing principles that sell Crest toothpaste 
and Nike sneakers.

According to the 1979 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 34.4 percent 
of all American high school seniors reported having tried drugs, and 18.5 
percent said they had done so in the last 30 days. By 1992, that figure had 
dropped to 17.9 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively. Believers in the 
power of anti-drug advertising invariably point to this impressive 
reduction in drug use as evidence that campaigns like "Just Say No" and 
those created by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America actually work. 
Then, drug use began climbing again in the 1990s, as evidenced by the 
statistics: By 1997, 11.4 percent of all high schoolers had done drugs in 
the last 30 days. The rise coincided with the waning of the anti-drug 
advertising movement, a parallel that proponents of the campaign also used 
as "proof" of its efficacy when lobbying Congress for new funds.

But as much as the precipitous fall and rise of drug use in the 1980s and 
1990s looked like evidence of successful anti-drug advertising, some 
researchers are wary of directly connecting the two. Robert Hornik, a 
professor of communication at the Annenberg School of the University of 
Pennsylvania, and the researcher behind a new study of the effectiveness of 
anti-drug ads, says that there's a "possible correlation" between the ads 
and statistics of this period, but the drop in drug use could have had as 
much to do with any number of factors: youth disillusionment with drugs, as 
cocaine wreaked its havoc and ran its course; plus a general nationwide 
furor that kept drugs in the public eye.

"There was much more noise in the environment about drugs during that 
period," Hornik says. "So the number of exposures someone would have had 
[to messages] about drugs was much more substantial."

When drug use again began to rise in the late 1990s, the Partnership for a 
Drug-Free America and the ONDCP renewed their efforts: They began working 
together, and in 1998 they launched the National Youth Anti-Drug Media 
Campaign. Congress apportioned some $1 billion to pay for advertising space 
for the ads produced by the two groups, and an anti-drug media blitz 
flooded the nation with an assortment of anti-drug advertisements. Despite 
the drop in drug use, the "Just Say No" message was declared irrelevant: It 
was the message of a former administration, and had long been eviscerated 
by both press and youth as the simplistic message of an exceedingly unhip 
First Lady. The government shifted gears and came up with a new series of 
approaches.

Although the ONDCP has been releasing its own anti-drug ad campaigns since 
the 1980s, the new National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign fomented a more 
regimented strategy for that group.

Over the last four years, the ONDCP has released a series of "platform" 
advertisements: the "Negative Consequences" platform, for example, includes 
ads that depict kids getting in trouble when they do drugs; the "Resistance 
Skills" platform includes tips on how to say "no" to peer pressure; the 
"Parenting Skills" platform instructs parents to talk to their kids about 
drugs; the "Norm Education" platform sends the message that "the coolest 
kids don't do drugs." The main theme of the ONDCP's campaign has been "The 
Anti-Drug" brand, which extends across several platforms and instructs kids 
to find their own "anti-drug" (such as music or sports or a pet) to keep 
them straight.

When Bush appointed John Walters drug czar in May of last year, drug war 
watchdog groups anticipated the beginning of another guns-and-jails era for 
the ONDCP, with a greater emphasis on military and criminal punishments. 
Walters, a drug "hawk" who had served under William Bennett, was well known 
for his moral condemnation of drug use and his criticism of Clinton's drug 
war techniques. Although the War on Drugs dropped from the national agenda 
in the days after Sept. 11, it came rushing back in January with the 
ONDCP's first effort under Walters -- an ad campaign that managed to 
conflate moralism and nationalism with a heavy dose of guilt, and which 
immediately generated a flurry of both positive and outraged media coverage.

The new ads essentially warn drug users that when they buy drugs, they are 
funding terrorism.

In the ads, a series of shrugging teens confess their culpability in a 
variety of ugly terrorist activities: "I helped a bomber get a fake passport.

All the kids do it." The tagline: "Drug money supports terror. If you buy 
drugs, you might too." The terror-drug ads seemed to usher in a new 
philosophy of social guilt: Buying drugs isn't just bad for your body and 
your future, but it also makes you personally liable for politically 
motivated mayhem.

The drug-terrorism ads were "a definite departure" from the ONDCP's softer 
find-your-anti-drug campaigns, which sought to inspire or distract kids 
tempted by drugs, says ONDCP spokesperson Jennifer De Vallance. The new 
ads, she says, are representative of a new philosophy in the War on Drugs: 
"Forever people have said you shouldn't use drugs because it's bad for your 
body, bad for your brain, bad for your parents," says de Vallance. "These 
ads take a broader perspective." Trying to convince teens that drugs are 
bad for them was a losing battle, she adds. "Talking to teenagers is like 
talking to Olympian gods, because they see themselves as invulnerable. But 
they do appreciate the concept of social responsibility."

Bush personally described the ONDCP's strategy as ushering in a new "period 
of personal responsibility" -- moving away from "if it feels good do it" to 
an age of "morals." Explained the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 
a news release: "Americans must set norms that reaffirm the values of 
responsibility and good citizenship while dismissing the notion that drug 
use is consistent with individual freedom."

But critics have claimed that the ads are merely heavy-handed propaganda 
for the Bush administration's conservative agenda: By associating the War 
on Drugs with the popular War on Terrorism, they say, the administration 
hopes to curry support for its more militaristic approach to battling drug use.

"There's a new troika driving U.S. drug policy -- Attorney General John 
Ashcroft, Asa Hutchinson [head of the DEA] and Walters," says Ethan 
Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization 
that advocates drug war reform and harm-reduction approaches to drug abuse. 
"All three of them are interested in drug policy primarily in terms of 
advancing a more reactionary political agenda in the U.S. They are making 
an effort to resuscitate the Bennett-politicized drug war of a decade ago."

(In the weeks following the release of the ads, Walters also announced a 
new plan to reduce national drug use by 25 percent, relying heavily on 
interdiction, criminal justice, and military approaches, with additional 
dollars going to specialized treatment programs.

Meanwhile, the DEA staged two high-profile drug busts, including one on the 
controversial legalized cannabis clubs of San Francisco.)

Even those in the advertising industry concur that the drug-terror 
advertisements appear to have as much to do with maintaining support for 
the government's efforts as they do with actually reducing drug use. If the 
administration associates policy of any kind with the popular War on 
Terrorism, say veterans of the advertising industry, it is likely to 
maintain high approval ratings.

As Mark DiMassimo, C.E.O. of DiMassimo Advertising (and the creator of a 
series of Ecstasy ads for the Partnership for a Drug Free America), puts 
it, "This is wartime propaganda. It's sort of like going back to World II 
and World War I when they related what you eat and don't eat -- whether you 
threw out leftover rice -- to the war effort."

But even as the debate rages about the nuance and approach in this 
campaign, new research shows that, regardless of their content or gimmick, 
anti-drug advertisements aren't necessarily making an impression on the 
audience they are meant to sway anyway.

The political propaganda behind the terror-drug ads would be forgivable, 
theoretically, if the ads were actually convincing vast numbers of American 
youth to steer clear of drugs. But judging by the most recent research on 
anti-drug advertising efficacy, the ONDCP may need to return to the drawing 
board.

It is possible, of course, that guilt about terrorism as a means of 
enforcing "social responsibility" will, in fact, cause drug usage to 
plummet dramatically. Maybe teens really will steel themselves with 
thoughts of Osama bin Laden the next time someone offers them a joint, and 
just say no. (Never mind the fact that the joint was more likely to come 
from Humboldt County than Afghanistan or Iraq.) But the experts aren't 
counting on it, partly because recent reports show that, in general, 
there's no concrete link between anti-drug propaganda and teen drug use rates.

According to de Vallance, the new terror-drug ads have been hugely 
successful -- both because of the buzz they've created (some 175 articles 
have been written about the campaign already), and because of the impact 
they supposedly have had on youth. "These ads, in focus group testing, had 
among the highest results of reducing intention to use that we've seen in 
the history of the campaign," says de Vallance, who reports that more than 
70 percent of the focus group teens said the ads would deter them from 
trying drugs.

While encouraging, the focus group reports do not ensure that the 
drug-terror ads will work. In fact, it is quite possible that, in these 
days of fulsome anti-terror rhetoric, the focus group teens felt pressured 
to report that they wouldn't support terrorism by doing drugs.

When the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign launched in 1998, a 
massive research effort launched with it: With more than $1 billion 
apportioned for anti-drug advertising, the stakes were high enough to 
initiate a process to establish whether the money was well spent.

The effort was spearheaded by Westat, an independent research group in 
Maryland, with the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School conducting 
much of the actual research.

Every six months, researchers visit some 8,000 kids and their parents in 
their homes to interview them about their personal drug use and the ads 
they've seen. (They are promised anonymity.) Three reports have been issued 
since the research began in September 1999; three more are still to come.

In October of 2001, the researchers published their latest report assessing 
the cumulative effectiveness of all the new ads that had been issued by the 
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign since its launch.

The good news was that drug ads targeting parents often do encourage 
parents to talk to their kids about drugs.

The bad news was that, thus far, the media campaign hadn't had a measurable 
impact on the kids at all.

The average kid is currently seeing an anti-drug ad 2.7 times a week, 
according to Robert Hornik, Annenberg School professor and the scientific 
director of the report. "We're seeing lots of reports of exposure," says 
Hornik. But "we haven't seen any real change over time, and no real 
association between exposure and outcomes." This means that the kids see 
the ads, but it doesn't seem to have an immediate impact on their drug-use 
behavior.

Hornik warns that the October data represents only 18 months' worth of 
research, and that there will be three more reports: "It could be that it 
will take more time for the kids to be affected," he says. Still, Hornik's 
report isn't the only one with bad news for anti-drug advertisers: In the 
American Journal of Public Health, an unrelated group of University of 
Pennsylvania researchers also discovered that many of the approaches used 
by anti-drug ads are not only ineffective, but often even encourage kids to 
do drugs.

"Although there is some evidence that mass media campaigns can be 
successful, most studies evaluating mass media campaigns have found little 
or no effect," the report posits.

The researchers selected 30 anti-drug advertisements created by the 
Partnership for a Drug-Free America in the last four years and showed them 
to 3,608 students in grades 5 through 12. Afterwards, they interviewed the 
students about their responses to the ads. The researchers broke down the 
ads into categories -- ads that focused on the negative consequences of 
drug use (i.e., "This is your brain on drugs"), ads that focused on 
self-esteem issues (i.e., "The anti-drug"), ads that stressed "Just say 
no," as well as celebrity testimonials; and a category of ads about the 
dangers of heroin or methamphetamines. They then used the students' 
responses to measure the overall efficacy of each approach.

The results were decidedly mixed.

Researchers discovered that 16 ads seemed to be effective in discouraging 
drug use; but another eight ads had no measurable effect whatsoever, and 
six ads actually spurred the viewer to either want to go try the drugs, or 
feel less confident about how to reject them. Unfortunately, the ads that 
had the greatest impact on the viewers were the ones that scared kids away 
from heroin and methamphetamines -- drugs which most teens are not likely 
to try anyway.

The least effective ads were the ones that addressed marijuana and "drugs 
in general" -- ironically, the drugs that most teens are doing in the first 
place.

As the report concluded, "it may be much more difficult to change young 
people's beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding use of marijuana than 
use of 'harder drugs' ... The PSAs appear to have the biggest impact on 
those who seem to need them the least; or, those who most need to be 
influenced by these PSAs (i.e., those who do not view these risky behaviors 
as harmful or dangerous) are least likely to view the PSAs as effective." 
In other words, the kids who are already prone to try drugs aren't going to 
be discouraged by what they see in the ads; and the kids who wouldn't try 
them anyway are going to be most affected.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America acknowledges the results of the 
study, but has no plans to change its approach.

In general, says Steve Dnistrian, the executive vice president of the 
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, it's difficult to find concrete 
evidence that advertising does or doesn't work; to draw a direct line of 
cause (advertisement) with effect (purchase, or, in the case of drugs, lack 
thereof).

"There is no perfect way to measure advertising effectiveness," he says. 
"These [research results] are numbers we would take on any day of the week; 
in our mind, this is a very, very strong case to be made for the 
effectiveness of these ads. It also points to the issue that we've known 
for a long time -- no single ad will do the trick, which is why you need 
multiple ads and multiple strategies."

Dnistrian does have a point: Critical as many people are of many anti-drug 
campaigns, it's difficult to advocate that they be completely removed from 
the airwaves.

Even if the ads aren't individually effective, they keep the issue of drugs 
in the public dialogue.

And during those serendipitous times when anti-drug ads dovetail with 
national alarm over a topic -- the influence of "Big Tobacco," or the 
sudden widespread use of crack -- it is likely that they influence a broad, 
if brief, disgust with all drugs.

But even if anti-drug campaigns succeed in keeping drugs in the public 
consciousness, there is a nagging issue, exposed in research, that some ads 
are so bad that they alienate their intended audience.

Advertising executive DiMassimo says the ONDCP's ads are particularly 
egregious, at least from an advertising executive's point of view: "The 
ONDCP generates long lists of approved messaging: Much of it comes out in 
the clunky language of social scientists, and it is a source of amusement 
and consternation among the creative people and communication professionals 
who make up the Partnership."

The various advertising agencies that contribute to the Partnership's 
campaign tend to use traditional tools in creating their ads. DiMassimo 
describes this as "going to hang out with teens, learn about them, and then 
coming back with details in their language, like a cultural 
anthropologist." This type of saturation research works much of the time, 
he says, admitting that some ad industry veterans who have used this 
approach to make anti-drugs ads have often missed the mark as well.

Based on his own experience advertising to kids, DiMassimo believes that 
ads that try to be "cool" are the ones that will be received most 
skeptically -- for example, the clunky series of ads that educated 
teenagers onhow to say "no" to the drugged out "cool" kids who hang out at 
"hip" parties.

The ads appeared to have been made by out-of-touch authorities who have no 
idea how kids dress, talk or dance.

The biggest mistake, says DiMassimo, is when the ads "overstate the danger" 
of drugs. "Kids believe anti-drug people are stiff, uptight, overnervous 
parental-type figures, and when you overdo it you play in to that side of 
the brand," he says. Kids know perfectly well that drugs are fun, he says, 
and there is little point in trying to tell them otherwise, a la "Reefer 
Madness." He describes the best kind of ad as a cost-benefit analysis: "The 
Partnership's work on marijuana is understated -- we say that no one says 
pot will kill you, but that there are better things to be than a burnout." 
He uses the ONDCP's terrorism ads as an example of the worst kind of 
authoritarian browbeating of teens and believes most kids will know that 
the ads are overstated.

Still, DiMassimo's own campaign -- the Partnership's ambitious new 
anti-Ecstasy initiative -- could be accused of overstatement. Twenty-seven 
people out of an estimated 3.4 million who used Ecstasy between 1994 and 
1999 died under the influence of the drug; yet the new campaign chooses to 
focus on the death of one young woman as a warning against using the drug. 
You could say that the ads are merely focusing on the worst-case scenario, 
but kids who are aware of just how rare Ecstasy deaths are might simply 
reject the ads wholesale as authoritarian exaggeration. Other anti-Ecstasy 
ads are equally dramatic, depicting teens partying it up on E while their 
friend lies passed out and alone in the bathroom, under the tagline 
"Ecstasy: Where's the Love?"

Critics of anti-drug advertising who follow this research wonder whether 
ads that try to discourage kids from doing drugs aren't mostly futile.

They often insist that the money would be better spent addressing kids who 
do drugs and need help dealing with their addiction. "Everything the ONDCP 
and Partnership does is focused on 'Just Say No,' mostly scare tactics, and 
occasionally a positive message about why you shouldn't choose drugs," says 
Nadelmann. "We think you should do messages directed at young people who 
are already experimenting or doing drugs, aimed at keeping them out of 
trouble." He notes: "Surveys show that campaigns directed at getting people 
to not do things are the least effective."

Drug war reformers like Nadelmann and David Borden, executive director of 
the liberal Drug Reform Coordination Network, tend to support peer 
education programs and harm-reduction principles over blanket advertising 
(and, similarly, they prefer legalization or treatment to expensive 
interdiction). "You have to meet people where they are. Every young person 
is in a different place, so the programs that will work the best are the 
ones that are run by or with their peers," says Borden. "You can't do that 
by running ads during the Superbowl."

It will take months, even years, to know whether the new anti-drug campaign 
has an impact on drug use, although Walters has promised that these efforts 
and others will reduce drug use by 25 percent by 2007. It is a bold 
commitment given that the ingredients of effective anti-drug advertising 
remain something of a mystery; and since youthful tastes are as flighty as 
the videos on MTV, they probably will remain so for quite some time. But 
there is also little evidence to suggest that Walters would get better 
results if he moved his $180 million ad dollars to peer education programs 
and harm reduction groups.

The terror-drug ads are perhaps best viewed as a public relations machine 
for the Bush administration, summing up in a few words (and a lot of 
taxpayer money) the government's moral philosophies, the way "Just Say No" 
summed up the Reagan era.

Government drug propaganda is just that: propaganda veiled as a behavior 
modification tool. It seems that no number of simplistic, catchy anti-drug 
slogans can fully shape America's convoluted and varied attitude towards 
drugs. Even certain Bush family members have been known to stray, and 
surely Bush Senior told them all about "Just Say No." Perhaps some 
Americans will always have an appetite for drugs, and no remedy -- 
advertising, interdiction, education or criminal punishment -- will ever 
eradicate it.

About the writer Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon Technology.
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