DRUG CZAR SUPER BOWL AD FEATURES ANTI-ABORTION SUBTEXT

No, the White House anti-drug ads don't work, the latest, stealth report
from the federal government indicates. Commissioned by the Office of
National Drug Control Policy and conducted under the auspices of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, it states: "There is no evidence yet
consistent with a desirable effect of the [Media] Campaign on youth."
Though this semi-annual report builds on the poor results documented
previously, the taxpayer-funded ads - despite their demonstrated inability
to keep kids from drugs - do serve any number of purposes. One new use for
the campaign made its debut during the year's high-profile advertising
showcase, Sunday's Super Bowl.

As Joseph R. Giganti, Director of Media and Government Relations at the
American Life League stated after reviewing the new anti-marijuana ad -
entitled "Pregnancy" - on ONDCP's website, "Without question, there is a
very strong but subtle pro-life statement presented in this commercial."

Saying that "abortion on demand" thrives on the notion that actions lack
consequences, Giganti added, "This ad reinforces the consequences." Still
commenting on the ad, he said, you can't "just slice and dice a baby and
everything'll be good."

As to the ad's outcome of a young teenager having her baby, Mary Jane
Gallagher, Chief Operating Officer of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, "They
coded the message to make it seem this was this woman's only option."
According to Gallagher, "Such speaking down to viewers - that keeping the
child is the only alternative - I'm not used to that from the government in
a democracy."

Alerted to the ad, Nellie Gray, President of the March for Life Fund and
organizer of the annual anti-Roe v. Wade demonstrations in Washington,
said: "A government agency properly uses this scene of a pregnant mother's
drug abuse and grandparents' youth to help viewers understand that there is
no justification for anyone intentionally killing a preborn baby." As to
any possible ill effects on the baby from the mother's "drug abuse," Gray
added that her group has a "no exceptions, no compromise" policy on abortion.

I've reported on the Clinton White House granting the networks some $22
million in ad time they owed it in exchange for inserting
government-approved (and even government scripted), anti-drug plots in TV
shows. More than one source worried that if the government got away with
that, there'd be scant reason to limit its social engineering to drugs.
Someday, some administration gripped by a perceived responsibility to
instruct people how to live might soon train its sights on reproductive
rights, or so these First Amendment advocates thought. Fearing that
anti-abortion themes might conceivably start cropping up in sitcoms and
dramas, no one worried they'd be flaunted in the ads themselves.

Well, the Clinton Federal Communications Commission eventually ruled the
government couldn't pay for messages embedded in TV shows without alerting
viewers to that fact. Such notice robbing those messages of much of both
their ability to influence viewers and their appeal to government social
marketers, the Bush administration commendably scrapped that part of its
anti-drug campaign.

However, it took only about a year of his running the national ad campaign
for Bush Drug Czar John Walters to launch his first attack on abortion in
the guise (or so said the two anti-abortion activists quoted above) of his
increasingly outrageous ads.

The woman holding the pregnancy test strip in the ONDCP Super Bowl ad is
certainly young and curvy enough that, in a cute little bit of
misdirection, viewers no doubt assumed the test was for her, especially
since her daughter is off-camera. But we soon learn the parents of the girl
who looks about 14 and got pregnant via the demon weed, are - pay attention
now, America - soon to be, "the youngest grandparents in town." Ramming the
point home, the ad tells us, "There will be an addition to their family
soon." As for the also young, but balding grandfather-to-be, he probably
doesn't look nearly as frayed by life as he soon will.

That's because, in the ad's self-contained world, options apparently aren't
available to this family. "Youngest grandparents" - that's the only outcome
that's indicated. And, as mom embraces her, the ad ends with the young
girl's face registering fear and what looks like acquiescence as we're
informed: "Smoking marijuana impairs your judgment - it's more harmful than
we all thought."

For many, of course, having the baby would indeed be their choice. But -
for now, anyway - there are other choices, not that viewers would glean
that from a government ad that seeks to model 'correct' behavior.
Gallagher, of NARAL Pro-Choice America, asserted that, "The government's
message didn't portray the legal options available to this young woman
under Roe v. Wade: to keep the child, to put the child up for adoption, or
to seek a safe and legal abortion."

Katherine Minarik, Director of Campus Programs for the Feminist Majority
Foundation, said that government commercials should try to paint a picture
of reality. "And if in that picture you eliminate the concept of
reproductive freedom, then you're doing an enormous disservice to not only
the health, but the lives of young people."

Saying that her legal team will ponder action regarding the ad's public
funding (the total ONDCP Super Bowl ad buy exceeded $4 million), Gallagher
said, "We can't let this effort go unchecked - that they take these social
policies that run counter to the majority of Americans' views and push them
down our throats."

Ken Diem, Chairman of the New York State Right to Life Party, countered
that government advertising, "should be promoting abstinence and respect
for your body, which involves no drugs and no promiscuity." Saying that the
ad meshes well with his party's concerns, Diem said, "The government should
promote an abstinence program hand-in-hand with the anti-drug message." In
fact, he'd like to see it part of any Bush administration faith-based
initiative. As to any criticism of the government's involvement in the
abortion issue, Diem said, "Poppycock. The government has been involved
with a woman's right to choose since day one. Only when the government
stands up to respect the sanctity of life do they cry foul."

Minarik agreed with Gallagher that the ad makes it appear the young woman
has but one option. "But teenagers still have choices after an unintended
pregnancy. And we as a society can never let them believe they have no
choice. This is just another example of a broader policy of eliminating
access to needed information on reproductive health," she said.

Everything old is new again. Harry Anslinger, Walters' ideological and
official progenitor both, could have warned the ad's father to lock his
daughter away from those fiends hopped up on that reefer stuff. This a new
century, not Anslinger's 1930s, the young wanton was apparently a willing
participant, wacked as she was herself on pot. How else to explain a
teenage girl falling prey to a boy's pressure? (Simple decency requires
shrinking from the notion of such a young girl's lasciviousness unmediated
by marijuana.)

Giganti said the point that sex has its consequences is driven home by the
girl's "fearful" expression as the ad ends. There's no "easy solution" to
this family's dilemma, he said. "It's realistic that the parents are
concerned." He applauded that they're not being "complicit in the murder of
their own grandchild." By being "loving, concerned and comforting," the
parents are "taking a bad situation and making the best of it."

Gallagher, however, felt the ad was wildly unrealistic: "It indicates this
will be easy for the family to tackle. It's absurd."

Giganti doubted that Walters intentionally sat down with his creative team
and in the context of a hard-hitting ad for teens, reached for a message on
abortion. Acknowledging the ads' "subtext," Giganti said, "I don't know if
it's intentional. I believe not." He added, "I don't think it was set up to
reflect a pro-life view. Though in a perfect world that might be what happens."

The ad was created gratis by McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising and
filtered through the Partnership for a Drug-Free America for subsequent
approval and purchase of airtime by ONDCP. Both the partnership (which, to
its credit, has refused to get involved with the White House drugs =
terrorism ads) and ONDCP declined comment. McCann-Erickson refused to make
its creative team available for an interview; spokeswoman Susan Irwin would
say only that McCann-Erickson was "responsible for the idea." Irwin
elaborated no further, so it would seem, therefore, that the get-pregnant,
have-the-child (though you're a child yourself) message originated on
Madison Avenue.

Since McCann-Erickson won't say that Smith or Jones on its staff cooked up
the idea -- and what prompted their thinking -- what remains clear is that
the White House approved the ad. And it paid for its inclusion in the
year's most-watched show amidst all the other high-profile ads that debuted
on Sunday.

This came less than a week after President Bush addressed by phone hookup a
massive anti-choice protest in Washington seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Voicing his hope to ban a type of late-term abortion he termed
"partial-birth" abortion, Bush spoke on the 30th Anniversary of the Supreme
Court decision. He told the crowd that a "self-evident truth calls us to
value and to protect the lives of innocent children waiting to be born."
Not wanting to risk a photograph of himself at the rally for later use by
pro-choice advocates (and yes, he was out of town, but the anniversary
occurs on the same date every year), Bush continued Ronald Reagan's
weaselly tradition of addressing the annual protest only by telephone.

Lest you un-American eggheads who don't watch television and don't let your
kids watch consider yourselves immune to the ads, consider this from an
ONDCP press release: "[T]he Campaign is designed to reach Americans of
diverse backgrounds wherever they live, learn, work, play and practice
their faith."

"Play" I knew about, having seen a White House ad emblazoned on the
backboard at my local glass-strewn, schoolyard basketball court, the bent,
naked rims without a net. (Never mind the social science proving that
spending on decent athletic facilities, along with the after-school
programs to use them, go further than any TV ads to keep kids from abusing
drugs.) But I haven't detected the White House's heavy hand in my quirky
little church yet. Given the administration's evident willingness to breach
the church-state divide, perhaps it's only a matter of time.