CLINTON, GINGRICH DRUG PLAN HITS THE AIR

Media: $2-billion nationwide ad campaign will try to persuade teenagers to
forgo narcotics. GOP senator calls it 'dangerously weak.'

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

Announced in Atlanta, the campaign--which began with advertisements in 75
morning newspapers and spots on all four networks Thursday night--is
budgeted at $2 billion over five years.

Though the bulk of the effort will focus on television, ads produced free
by some of Madison Avenue's premiere agencies also will run on the 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 argued 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 UC 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 to help
teenagers 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 antidrug media campaign has been underway since January in 12 pilot
cities in response to concern over the steady increase of drug use by
youths in recent years.

One shows a girl wielding a frying pan--wildly smashing it into things and
then pausing to tell the audience that is what drugs do to your brain.
Another pictures a child recounting her mother's warnings not to play with
matches. But, 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.

Drawing on his personal experience, Clinton referred to the drug problems
that once plagued his half-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. "How did this happen that I didn't see this
coming and didn't stop it?"

And he added: "Nobody in America is free of this--not the president, not
any community, any school, any church, any neighborhood."

The advertising blitz, crafted by the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy 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 so far has allocated funds only for the first year of the
project, Gingrich said the rest of the money will be found.

"We are all trying to reach out to every young American and say: Don't do
it," Gingrich said.

Although public health advocates suggested that the campaign's funds would
be better invested in programs targeting teenagers, some congressional
Republicans said the money should be spent on more aggressive interdiction
of drugs.

Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) attacked the ad campaign as "inexcusably and
dangerously weak."

"By slashing budgets for interdiction and border protection, this president
has rendered our nation unable to fight--let alone win--this terrible drug
war," Coverdell said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski