TEEN HELPS LAUNCH ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN

James Miller III, a Central Catholic High School student, speaks about his
mother's fight with drugs as a national anti-drug media campaign begins

An impassioned Portland high school student and a flurry of eye-opening
anti-drug ads figured into the presidential kickoff Thursday of an
unprecedented ad campaign to stem teen drug abuse.

Portland played a key part in the last six months as one of 12 test-market
cities for some of the print, TV, radio and billboard ads. Those ads went
national Thursday with President Clinton's and House Speaker Newt Gingrich's
bipartisan push in Atlanta.

"We know that the more young people fear drugs, the more they disapprove of
them, the less likely they are to use them," Clinton said in launching the
five-year, potentially $1 billion campaign. "Therefore, kicking America's
drug habit requires a dramatic change in attitudes accompanied and
reinforced by a dramatic increase in personal responsibility by all Americans."

Beginning this week, the anti-drug campaign will bombard a target audience
of parents and their children, ages nine to 18, with anti-drug messages on
the four major TV networks and in 75 major newspapers. Some of Madison
Avenue's premiere ad agencies produced the ads free. The Oregonian, local
television stations and various other Oregon outlets have been running the
ads as part of Portland's test-market work.

Although Thursday's teleconference program featured the president and others
of prominence, one of the emotional peaks came when James Miller III, 17,
who will be a senior this fall at Portland's Central Catholic High School,
stepped to the microphone. He told a crowd of hundreds of grownups and
children that he had joined the anti-drug movement after seeing the
devastating power of drugs on his mother, who once used drugs.

"James had every one of them spellbound," said Ed Maibach, of the
Washington, D.C., firm that developed the ad campaign strategy.

"James was exquisite," Maibach added. "In my opinion, he was the star of a
stellar day."

Back in Portland, his mother, Linda Annette Miller, 39, a crew supervisor
for Greyhound bus lines, said her son had asked if he could tell about her
successful fight against drugs, and she had proudly given her permission
with the understanding it could give other families hope.

"He wanted to know if he could mention me, but it still kind of bothered
him," she said Thursday evening. She told him to go ahead. "If you don't
talk about the past," she said, "you can never focus on the future."

Linda Miller said she had been clean and sober from cocaine, marijuana and
alcohol abuse since James said something eight years ago.

"James was 9 years old, and he came to visit me, and he said, 'Mama, can we
talk?' And I said sure. He said, 'Mom, people are talking about you, and
they're talking to you around us, and it hurts, and I just wanted to know if
you could get yourself clean and sober, get yourself cleaned up.'

"And I did."

James, who was en route to Portland late Thursday, lives with his father,
James Miller Jr., and stepmother, Jackie Miller. Linda Miller said she and
her son remain close.

Maibach said he understood that James Miller's remarks prompted the
president to depart from his prepared text and to recall his brother Roger's
battle with cocaine.

"What kind of fool was I that I did not know this was going on?" Clinton
said. He added, "There's somebody like my brother back at your school who's
a good kid, just a little lost."

The ad campaign aims to "knock America upside the head," Clinton said in his
kickoff. In a 1997 national survey, half of high school seniors and nearly
one-third of eighth-graders reported having used drugs.

One spot walks viewers past school lockers into a classroom of pint-sized
desks. "It's true," the announcer exhorts parents. "The use of marijuana has
actually gone down . . . to the fifth grade. Talk to your kids now, before
someone else does."

Another is a spin-off of the fried egg "This is your brain on drugs" ad so
widely used during the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's 11-year
campaign. The updated version, about heroin's ruinous power, shows a
frying-pan-wielding young woman smashing an egg and then tearing up her
whole kitchen.

That ad has been running since January in the 12 test cities, including
Portland. The ad generated a 300 percent increase in calls to a national
drug-use clearinghouse, said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug
policy director.

Calls to the Regional Drug Initiative's Portland phone number went from
about 20 a month before the test-market campaign started to about 130 a
month since then, said spokesman Larry Langdon in Portland.

Langdon said, "If it really has a major impact, I think in a year or so
you'll see some reductions in drug use."

For information and referrals in the Portland area, call 294-7074. Elsewhere
in Oregon, call 1-800-822-6772.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett