GAO: $1 BIL.+ ANTI-DRUG EFFORT INEFFECTIVE

ONDCP's Latest Spots Are Tagged, 'Above the Influence.'

WASHINGTON - A Government Accountability Office probe of the White
House's anti-drug media campaign has found that the $1 billion-plus
spent on the effort so far has not been effective in reducing teen
drug use. The report recommends that Congress limit funding until the
Office of National Drug Control Policy "provides credible evidence of
a media campaign approach that effectively prevents and curtails
youth drug use."

The report comes at a time when Congress is poised to take up the
anti-drug media campaign budget when it returns from its recess. The
campaign's current budget is $99 million, the lowest since the effort
began in 1998. ONDCP has asked for $120 million next year. The Senate
agrees with that amount, but the House has recommended $100,000.

The GAO report examined the Westat survey, named after the Rockville,
Md., research firm that was awarded the contract in 1998 to evaluate
the campaign. Since then, the government has spent $42 million on a
survey that has been a constant thorn in ONDCP's side because critics
argue that it uses a flawed methodology. The survey has concluded
that the campaign raises awareness among parents but has done little
to alter teen drug use.

Critics charge that Westat did not start measuring the campaign's
effectiveness until nearly 18 months after the launch, so the
baseline is off. Westat once reported that the campaign contributed
to an increase in marijuana use among teenage girls, a finding that
captured media attention. When the campaign changed its target
audience and creative was directed at 11- to 15-year-olds, Westat
continued to measure the previous demo of 9- to 11-year-olds and was
unable to measure the new target.

In a five-page response to the GAO report, drug czar John Walters
questions the validity of the Westat measurement tool because it
seeks to directly prove that advertising caused teens to stop using
drugs. "Establishing a causal relationship between exposure and
outcomes is something major marketers rarely attempt because it is
virtually impossible to do," Walters wrote. "This is one reason why
the 'Truth' anti-tobacco advertising campaign, acclaimed as a
successful initiative in view of the significant declines we've seen
in teen smoking, did not claim to prove a causal relationship between
campaign exposure and smoking outcomes, reporting instead that the
campaign was associated with substantial declines in youth smoking."

Nancy Kingsbury, the GAO's managing director of applied research
methods, said Walters raised a valid point. "It is a really tough
social science question to answer and we understand that," she said.
"What puzzles us is that when the [Westat] contract was first put in
place, ONDCP got a lot of political capital out of the fact that they
had an evaluation. But it's just that it did not come out the way
they wanted. I still give them credit for doing it. It is the right
thing to do."

Kingsbury said Westat has done work in the past for GAO, but that
those contracts were in separate divisions that had nothing to do
with its current report. Westat handled a $1.6 million contract for
GAO from 1997-99 evaluating Medicare and a $534,000 hospital survey
done in 2004-05.

ONDCP has been in a no-win situation since the GAO probe began, which
followed the convictions of two top agency officials for overbilling
the government on the campaign. As one observer put it at the time
the probe was launched, "If the GAO finds that Westat is a piece of
crap, then ONDCP has wasted $42 million. If the report says Westat
has somehow found the holy grail of advertising cause and effect,
then the campaign is not working by that measure."

ONDCP representative Tom Riley points to independent studies showing
that teen drug use has declined by 19 percent. "Everybody who follows
this issue acknowledges the campaign's role in those great results,"
he said. "Evaluation is important to us. The most telling statistic
is that adult drug use has not appreciably changed while teen drug
use [the target of the campaign] has gone down dramatically. I think
that's the definition of successful advertising."

Stephen Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America, which coordinates creative on the campaign through 40
agencies, said the GAO probe provides no new learning for the
campaign. "There is nothing you can do with this study to change the
campaign," he said. "There is no learning here because it seeks to
prove something you can't prove. The campaign was never meant to be
this kind of a silver bullet."

The recent GAO report was prompted by a request from Sen. Richard
Shelby, R-Ala., to examine all of the contracts that were part of the
media campaign, including ads, public relations and evaluation.

Riley said that what matters in the end is balancing the kind of
messages teens hear. "Teens are saturated with pro drug messages from
rap music, from movies and from other teens around them," he said.
"The campaign is the only national source of anti-drug messages and
it is vital to continue funding it."