UNLIKELY BEDFELLOWS: MEDIA LITERACY AND ANTI-DRUG EDUCATION

Teachers who visited the federal anti-drug website recently,
theantidrug.com, found some unusual suggestions for drug prevention.
Just after the drug czar's $3.5 million advertisement linking drug
use to terrorism premiered at the Superbowl, the site featured a link
to a report about a conference held at the White House last summer on
how to use media literacy techniques to keep kids off drugs.

Now, the site's teachers' guide section includes links to two other
media literacy lesson plans sponsored by the drug czar's office:
Media Literacy for Drug Prevention with the New York Times, posted in
February, and Anti-Drug Education with the New York Times, developed
last year.

There is, unsurprisingly, an inherent conflict when a government
agency partners with media to do "anti-drug education" -- as the
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) found to its dismay
two years ago, when its behind-the-scenes deal to pay for politically
correct content in TV shows and articles was exposed.

This should have been an object lesson in the perils of having a
skeptical audience that critiques sources and their objectivity. The
Times countered that suggestion with this statement: "Sponsorship
from a government agency to run an ad or create a supplement is
acceptable, as long as it is clear that the ad or the supplement is
sponsored by the government agency. These curricula were clearly
marked as 'Developed by The New York Times Newspaper in Education
Program with sponsorship from the Office of National Drug Control
Policy.'"

Ironically, the enterprise may hold real promise for drug education
- -- just not in the way the government -- and possibly the New York
Times -- intends.

The idea of educating young people to look at media critically took
hold in the U.S. in the 1970s, with support largely coming from
progressive educators. Now techniques like deconstructing ads to show
how corporations influence consumers are so widespread that they are
used by health educators seeking to prevent drinking and cigarette
use.

This has proved to be one of the most effective methods yet to reduce
teen smoking. Research shows that the most effective anti-smoking
media campaigns are those in which the ads themselves incorporate
lessons torn from the pages of left media literacy and attack evil
Big Tobacco for false and misleading advertising.

Using such techniques to fight illegal drugs, however, raises some
problems that anti-smoking campaigns don't face. Says Sut Jhally,
Professor of Communications at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, "Given that there's not a lot of representation of illicit
drug use in media (and certainly not in advertising), I'm not sure
what you would be deconstructing."

One approach suggested at the White House conference is to have kids
deconstruct "pro-drug" websites as examples it gives --
http://www.hyperreal.com or http://www.lycaeum.com

This presents some risks, however, some of which are mentioned in the
report. The authors recognize that some (probably a small) percentage
of kids may not previously have known how to access alternative
sources of drug information -- such material is often screened by the
filters used by schools and some parents.

But beyond worrying about simple exposure, the media lit lessons from
the White House conference and those developed by the New York Times
offer no suggestions about what to do if the kids find the
descriptions of drug use on such sites or in movies and TV more in
line with their own experiences than the negative consequences
depicted by official anti-drug information.

The conference report goes on to suggest, among other exercises, that
youth compare and contrast two different points of view about
marijuana and find sites that celebrate marijuana and sites that
condemn it. Another exercise asks students to provide one or two key
facts and myths (e.g., rumors, incomplete story about a drug's health
consequences) about illegal drug use and invites them to see how
frequently these are presented on Internet Web sites.

Says Seeta Pena Gangadharan, policy director for the Media Channel,
"What struck me at first glance on reading about the conference was
that it seems that ONDCP comes in with the assumption that kids,
parents and educators will naturally believe that the anti-drug
message is right."

Since media literacy education provides kids with a healthy
skepticism and skills such as how to check sources for accuracy,
analyze persuasive techniques and know the agenda of the source,
what's to stop kids from deconstructing anti-drug rhetoric? If they
are taught that all advertisers have an agenda, what's to keep them
from looking critically at what the government presents as the truth
in its ads? And why assume that kids will find the anti-marijuana
position more compelling?

An educator's dream is to have kids apply critical thinking across
contexts -- but for the drug czar's office, this could well be a
nightmare.

The commercials linking drugs and terror, for example, already have
even those kids who are committed to not using drugs laughing. Jhally
reports that his college students found them amusing, not convincing.

Said Kim Cutler, 17, a high school student from Cupertino, Calif. who
has written for Alternet's youth media partner WireTapmag.org, "One
paragraph on the drugs/terror website I found really funny. It said
'Drug traffickers and terrorists use similar methods to achieve their
criminal ends. Most importantly, they share a common disregard for
human life.'"

The portentous, over-the-top language might convince
"pre-adolescents," Cutler said, "But when you are seventeen you have
pretty much established a lot of views."

"I do have some background in media literacy," she added. "I
understand that different groups have different agendas and I can see
both sides but I had already decided that I'm not going to do drugs."

Joe, 16, from West Virginia, who asked that his real name not be
used, said, "I saw the Superbowl ads and I thought they were kind of
horrible and pretty scary. But they never came out with anything that
backed it up."

Joe has tried the drug most commonly used by teens, marijuana (which
has no association with foreign terrorists since it is overwhelmingly
domestically grown). He never used it again, however, because he
decided independently that smoking pot wasn't for him. "I prize my
own intellect and dignity and I think that drugs lower them if you
become addicted or do it a lot."

Joe thinks the government needs to be more honest if it wants to
reach kids. "It would be better for them to admit that marijuana is
less harmful than heroin," he says. His parents were honest with him
about their own marijuana use in the 1960s, he says and he believes
part of why he doesn't take drugs is because they were truthful in
how they discouraged it. He adds that he thinks the anti-smoking ads
work because there is solid evidence to back them.

Says Robert Kubey, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Media
Studies, Rutgers University and a participant in the White House
media literacy conference, "You can't let the media literacy genie
out of the bottle and heighten kids' sensitivity and critical
faculties and have them only apply that to what you want them to
apply it to."

The drug czar's office (which did not return calls for comment) may
believe that it is being open and honest about the facts on drugs but
kids' reactions to its ads suggest otherwise.

At a recent National Institute on Drug Abuse seminar on media
coverage of addiction, Dave Sirulnick, executive vice president at
MTV, said none of their research suggests that kids will buy into
scare tactics like those used in the drug/terror campaign. Years of
research by academics backs him up.

So perhaps a new, media-literate generation could force the
government to be more honest about drugs -- and help spur a
long-needed debate about the most effective drug policy. I'm not sure
at all that this is the result the drug czar's office intends. But
then I suppose my own media literacy prompts me to be cynical about
government agencies, particularly this one.