CLINTON, GINGRICH ANNOUNCE NEW ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN

ATLANTA (AP) -- Updating ``just say no'' with images to ``knock America
upside the head,'' President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich
announced an anti-drug campaign aimed at bombarding the nation with $1
billion in hard-hitting ads over the next five years.

Starting Thursday night on network TV, the government campaign -- bigger
than last year's huge Nike and Sprint campaigns for comparison-- intends to
hit both parents and kids at least four times a week with graphic images of
drugs' destructiveness and children's vulnerability.

``These ads were designed to knock America upside the head and get
America's attention and empower all of you,'' Clinton told an audience of
mostly children, clusters of them sporting Boy Scout and Girl Scout
uniforms.

Gingrich pledged to try to win congressional approval for expanding the
$195 million one-year campaign into a five-year, $1 billion taxpayer
investment in stopping youth drug use. And the government will ask media
outlets to match the federal money dollar for dollar.

In a 1997 national survey, half of high school seniors and nearly one-third
of eighth-graders reported using drugs.

``I wanted to come here today to stand with the president to say that on a
bipartisan basis -- Democrats and Republicans, the legislative branch and
the presidency -- we're all trying to reach out to every young American and
say, 'Don't do it,''' said Gingrich, R-Ga.

The president recalled his younger brother, Roger, battling cocaine
addiction. ``What kind of fool am I that I didn't know what was going on?
... There's somebody like my brother back at your school who's a good kid,
just a little lost,'' Clinton said.

Politics were only on temporary hold. From the ceremonies in the Georgia
World Congress Center, Gingrich headed to a Republican fund-raiser in New
York, Clinton to Democratic events in Atlanta and Miami that would raise
$1.3 million for the effort to oust the GOP from control of Congress.

The president also was stopping in Daytona Beach, Fla., to meet with those
who have been fighting the state's raging wildfires.

Even before Clinton wrapped his drug speech, Republican Sens. Paul
Coverdell of Georgia and John Ashcroft of Missouri issued statements
knocking Clinton's record as soft on drug criminals.

The ads were in 75 Thursday morning newspapers. Though the bulk of the
campaign will focus on TV, ads produced free by some of Madison Avenue's
premiere agencies will also run on radio, billboards and the Internet.

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, with its Reagan-era slogan ``Just Say No.'' 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 12 test cities where it generated
a 300 percent increase in calls to a national clearinghouse of information
on drug use, said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug policy
director.

At least $150 million of this year's appropriation will be spent directly
on air time targeting middle-schoolers. That, according to 1997 Advertising
Age figures, is more than Nike or Sprint spent to air single-brand ads.

Based on a study of the test campaign, McCaffrey acknowledged it could be
three years before anyone knows whether the ads are actually driving down
drug use. And some activists doubted the ads' effectiveness.

The Lindesmith Center, a research project of philanthropist George Soros,
who supports legalized marijuana for medical use, said the money would be
better spent on after-school programs and drug treatment.

For more than a decade, media outlets gave the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America some $3 billion in free air time for its public service
announcements.

But since 1991, with the explosion of new competition that cable channels
brought, prime time has been squeezed by network promotions, shoving many
public service announcements to the wee hours. Teen drug use more than
doubled during that period.