ANTI-DRUG AD BLITZ FOR TEENAGERS

Nationwide campaign, costing $2 billion, will focus on television spots

WASHINGTON -- In a rare meeting of the minds, President Clinton and House
Speaker Newt Gingrich on Thursday jointly launched an unprecedented
nationwide media campaign to discourage teens from using drugs.

The campaign, which began with ads in 75 newspapers and spots on all four
television networks Thursday night, is budgeted at $2 billion over five
years. Although the bulk of the effort will focus on television, ads
produced free by some of Madison Avenue's premier agencies will also run on
radio, billboards and the Internet.

But some drug-policy experts challenged the campaign's effectiveness.

``There's remarkably little evidence that it will work,'' said Ethan
Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Research Institute
in New York. ``If we're going to spend billions of dollars, let's spend it
on things that will make more of a difference.''

Nadelmann argues that providing drug treatment and alternate activities for
youngsters would be a more savvy -- if less flashy -- approach.

Lawrence Wallack, a professor of public health at the University of
California-Berkeley, termed the campaign ``kind of like agreeing on the
least common denominator and saying because we agree on it, therefore it is
a good thing. It's the kind of strategy that makes everyone feel like
something is being done on the problem. . . . Everybody is happy, but it is
just not sufficient to have an impact on the problem.''

Wallack -- who advocates more mentoring programs and activities for teens
to deal with a wide array of public-health problems from drugs to early
pregnancies -- agreed that the campaign will increase awareness of the drug
problem. This is a good first step, he said, but it is not a solution.

He also criticized the effort for not targeting cigarette and alcohol use
among teens.

The anti-drug media campaign has been under way since January in 12 pilot
cities in response to concern over the steady increase of drug use by teens
in recent years.

The creators of the television ads aimed to shake up children and their
parents to address the problem of drug use.

One shows a young woman wielding a frying pan -- wildly smashing it into
things and then pausing to tell the audience that this is what drugs do to
your brain. Another pictures a child recounting her mother's warnings not
to play with matches. But when she's asked whether her mother warned her
about drugs, she says nothing.

``These ads are designed to knock America upside the head and get America's
attention,'' Clinton said in Atlanta, where he was joined by Gingrich as
the campaign was unveiled nationally.

Drawing on his personal experience, Clinton referred to the drug problems
that once plagued his brother, Roger Clinton, and stressed that the message
of the ads is for everyone.

``My brother nearly died from a cocaine habit and I've asked myself a
thousand times: What kind of fool was I that I did not know that this was
going on?'' the president said.

The advertising blitz, crafted by Clinton's drug-control office in
conjunction with the Partnership for a Drug-free America, will be funded
half through federal dollars and half through donated air time and
advertising space from media outlets.

Although Congress has so far allocated funds only for the first year of the
project, Gingrich said the rest of the money would come.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski