ANTI-DRUG ADS ARE CATCHY, BUT DO THEY REALLY WORK?

This is your brain on drugs. Just say no to drugs. What's your anti-drug?

Young people can recite anti-drug slogans as quickly as they can belt out
the plot of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. They've grown up seeing the ads - on
television, in print, on subway placards -- and they remember them.

But does such advertising, bought with millions in taxpayer dollars, keep
kids off drugs?

"You evaluate the best you can; you judge the best you can," said Robert
Hornik, a University of Pennsylvania professor of communication who is part
of a team evaluating the national youth media campaign of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The campaign started in 1998 by buying airtime for existing ads from the
nonprofit Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Since mid-1999 it has
produced new ads and developed the "My Anti-Drug" brand for youth.
Recently, it created ads linking buying drugs to supporting terrorism and
launched a series on Ecstasy, a popular club drug.

The campaign is up for congressional reauthorization this year. President
Bush's budget includes $180 million for the fiscal year beginning in October.

The campaign boils down to an exercise in social marketing, applying
consumer sales theory to promote a cause.

"It's very possible to impact people's behavior," said Richard Earle,
author of "The Art of Cause Marketing: How to Use Advertising to Change
Personal Behavior and Public Policy."

Earle said attempts to get people to fasten seat belts, practice safe sex
and assign designated drivers have bred some of the most effective
campaigns. All ran for years before seeing results, he said.

"It's the hardest kind of advertising to do," Earle said.

The method is complicated, in part because there's no way to know whether
kids honestly answer questions about drug use. And scientists can't
randomly test children for drugs.

The federally funded campaign augments the work of the New York-based
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which beginning in 1987 solicited free
creative work, airtime and print space for the cause.

Founding member Tom Hedrick said they used commercial marketing, much as
Nike would use to sell sneakers, to "unsell" drugs. Behavioral scientists,
marketing gurus and other experts guided production, and young people
offered reaction to previews.

A decrease in free airtime and increase in youth drug use spurred Congress
in 1997 to commit millions of dollars to buy slots through a new White
House campaign.

In February a paper in the American Journal of Public Health detailed a
University of Pennsylvania study of 30 public service announcements
produced before the alliance with the White House. The report said most of
the ads made adolescents think they would be less likely to use drugs, but
concluded several had little or no effect, and six made the young viewers
feel more likely to try drugs.

So far, Congress has spent $930 million over five years on the campaign.

Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy
Alliance, a nationwide nonprofit group seeking to liberalize drug laws,
said the campaign doesn't deter young people open to experimentation.
Moreover, she said, young people are naturally suspicious.

"They understand that adults would rather they don't use drugs," she said.
"They also believe that adults would say anything to deter them."

Rosenbaum would prefer an education campaign teaching kids who use drugs
how to stay safe. She likens such an effort to promoting condom use to
prevent the spread of AIDS.

"We've raised a generation of kids who don't just say no," she said. "They
think about it. They make their own decisions."