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.]