A Special Editorial Page Report

ADS COULD REACH MODERN MEDIADRENCHED KIDS

Barry McCaffrey's top priority doesn't change. On Oct. 20 in Bogota,
Colombia, the U.S. antidrug leader told journalists ``the heart and soul
of our effort is drug prevention among kids.''

On Oct. 29, testifying before a Senate committee in Washington, he said the
drive against drugs ``is going to be won in the value systems of our
adolescents.'' On March 24 of this year, in a visit to the SunSentinel
Editorial Board, he said his main goal is to reduce drug abuse by children.

To reach America's children and try to make their value systems healthier,
McCaffrey and his Office of National Drug Control Policy are commissioning
a new set of television advertisements. Unlike previous antidrug messages
on television, these will be paid ads, not unpaid publicservice
announcements.

Although PSAs often are quite persuasive, they air sporadically and usually
at the wrong time to reach a maximum number of young people. Moreover,
while the number of antidrug ads aired on TV dropped markedly since 1989,
messages that either glorify illegal drug use or present it as normal
behavior proliferated in movies, popular music, fashion advertisements and
other forms of mass communications.

It's no accident, therefore, that drug abuse among children has jumped in
the 1990s. While messages in the mass media can't, by themselves, either
stop drug usage or cause it to start, they can be powerful complements to
either side. In effect, these messages can help to create an atmosphere
that condones drug abuse or, much healthier, point out the
lifethreatening dangers of narcotics and stress that ``cool'' peers don't
use them.

McCaffrey will aim the new ads at 9to17yearolds, seeking to reach 90
percent of them at least four times a week. With a paid ad, the advertiser
in this case, McCaffrey's office has much more control over precisely
when they will appear.

They'll be paid for, in part, with $195 million in taxpayers' money
appropriated by Congress, and McCaffrey seeks matching contributions from
corporations. Any business owner with a functioning conscience ought to
contribute, and big donations should come from those companies operating in
the mass media: television networks and stations, newspaper and magazine
publishers, movie studios, musicrecording companies.

The ads will be neither heavyhanded nor simplistic. Using consultants and
focus groups, McCaffrey is tapping into the creativity of ad campaigns that
helped cut cigarette smoking in California and Massachusetts, and also
those that successfully market consumer products to children. Some ads will
be in Spanish; some will appear on the Internet, as well as on cable TV and
radio. Although ads are starting to appear now, they're old ones; the new
ads are expected by Feburary or March of 1998.

This campaign holds great promise of being effective, perhaps powerfully
so, if the advertisements turn out to be creative and on target. Of course
it's not a silver bullet against drugs; there is none.

If done well, however, this advertising campaign can help to change the
American atmosphere about drugs back to where it used to be. Call it the
social norm or the social contract against illegal drugs. Whatever the
name, it must be strengthened and then reinforced for every new generation
of precious American children.

Copyright © 1997, SunSentinel Company and South Florida Interactive, Inc.