A "WAR" ON DRUGS, BUT ONLY A MURMUR ON BOOZE

AFTER football star Don Rogers and college basketball sensation Len
Bias died within a week of each other a decade ago from cocaine
overdoses, the president of the United States declared "war" on
illegal drugs.

Then Congress OK'd an unprecedented taxpayer-funded social marketing
advertising campaign to discourage minors from using pot, smack, crack
and other illegal drugs through a $1 billion, five-year media blitz
commanded by a retired general, drug czar Barry McCaffrey.

In contrast, in the wake of seven publicized college binge-drinking
deaths last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala
didn't declare war on booze. Instead, she asked the governing board of
college athletics to adopt voluntary restrictions on college alcohol
advertising.

To public health advocates, it's just politics as usual.

Alcohol industry political action committees have already given
members of Congress $1 million in the past (off-election) year. It is
hardly a surprise that alcohol will receive mere public service
announcement status in the illegal drug media campaign, although
alcohol is more dangerous and costly to society than illegal drugs:

* Every day, on average, 11,318 American young people (12 to 20 years
of age) try alcohol for the first time, 6,488 try marijuana for the
first time, 2,786 try cocaine for the first time and 386 try heroin
for the first time.

* Alcohol is a factor in three leading causes of death for 15 to 24
year olds. Two to three times as many teenagers and young adults die
in alcohol-related traffic crashes as do from illegal drugs.

* While 2 percent of high school students used heroin last year, 31
percent of 12th graders admitted to having been intoxicated one or
more times in the month before the annual University of Michigan
"Monitoring the Future" study. Binge drinking (consuming five or more
drinks in a row) was reported by 31.3 percent of high school seniors,
25.1 percent of 10th graders, and 14.5 percent of eighth graders.

* Illegal drugs kill about 14,000 people a year at an annual cost to
taxpayers of about $70 billion. Three-quarters of the expense is
related to crime and law enforcement; one-quarter is
health-related.

Alcohol kills about 100,000 people annually at a cost to taxpayers of
about $99 billion a year. Eighty percent of this cost is
health-related. Nearly 2,000 Americans were killed by teenage drunken
drivers last year.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is the advertising agency
group that originally took Big Tobacco and Big Booze money and failed
to produce one ad to discourage children from smoking or drinking. It
is McCaffrey's partner in producing free ads scheduled for prime-time
television.

Campaign architects contend they have negotiated with stations to
broadcast public service announcements against underage drinking. But
bets are off on how many will appear in prime time with the showbiz
production quality of the illegal drug ads.

If Congress had to fund this experiment, it should have centered on
kids' first drug of choice - alcohol - and been based in research.

Demonizing the illegal drugs and glamorizing the legal drug is wasting
taxpayer money. What good do a few public service announcements do
when shown against a backdrop of beer ads celebrating the wonders of
alcohol?

In one year, the beer industry spends three times more on TV
advertising than McCaffrey has to spend on all media. Social marketing
can work, but research shows that a media campaign should tie in with
community-based activities. This one doesn't (and the federal
government has cut its support of local prevention work).

At the core of the drug-war campaign are parents talking to kids about
drugs. That may feel good, but research doesn't support it as a
successful prevention strategy.

Last January, McCaffrey kicked off the test phase of the campaign in
Denver by saying, "The most dangerous person in the United States is a
12-year-old smoking marijuana."

It hardly helps to learn from a recent Adweek interview that he is
basing this taxpayer gamble on his "gut feeling" that advertising
works - because it worked for the Army.