SAYING NO TO PROPAGANDA

Critics say the government's new anti-drug campaign is reactionary and
moralistic. Worse, it may not even work.

This is your brain on drugs.

Just say no. What's your anti-drug? D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.

Billions have been spent on catchy slogans and flashy branding to make the
rejection of drugs as appealing as the consumption of candy.

But have the dollars devoted to educating, cajoling, pleading and
frightening us away from drugs done the job? Even those who make the ads
admit a limited return on this investment: Teenagers see anti-drug ads 2.7
times a week, according to the government's numbers.

And yet 54 percent of all teens try drugs before they graduate from high
school.

Propaganda from the War on Drugs was supplanted by dispatches from the War
on Terrorism during the waning months of 2001. But last month, the Office
for National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) found a way to marry the two
battles in its latest anti-drug campaign, which equates drug use with
financing terrorists. At the same time, the Partnership for a Drug Free
America debuted its own ambitious anti-Ecstasy crusade entitled "Ecstasy:
Where's the Love?"

This new offensive is fueled by serious money.

Congress has allocated more than $1 billion for anti-drug advertising over
the next five years; $180 million will be spent this year alone, and that's
merely the quantifiable sums (uncountable sums have been donated in free
airtime and ad creation). Although advertising demands only a tiny portion
of the government's total anti-drug budget, it's considered the cornerstone
of the War on Drugs -- even though there is little proof that anti-drug ads
really work. In fact, there is evidence that some anti-drug ads don't work
and that others even (unintentionally) encourage drug use, according to the
newest research.

But the most vocal critics of the government's new anti-drug advertising
haven't focused on the questionable efficacy of the ads. Instead, they have
accused the Bush administration of using the War on Drugs to push a broad
and moralistic political agenda, while overlooking community-based
approaches to drug abuse.

Rather than offering real solutions, they claim, the drug-terror campaign
simply fans drug hysteria in the course of painting a new administration's
face and philosophy on the War on Drugs.

Can an ad campaign that ostensibly seeks to warn teens away from drugs
serve as political propaganda? Perhaps, if you subscribe to the idea that
good advertising can sell anything to anyone.

Would this matter if the ads in question, regardless of their political
agenda, managed to make a dent in drug abuse?

Maybe not. But so far, that appears to be the problem. Advertising can be
used to create habits and sustain them, but, when it comes to drugs, it
isn't necessarily an effective tool in snuffing them out.

Anti-drug propaganda, both government-funded and privately sponsored, has
existed since the 1930s (think "Reefer Madness"), but it wasn't until
cocaine -- and then, crack cocaine -- became a national epidemic that
federally funded anti-drug advertising as we know it was born. Nancy Reagan
launched the memorable "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s, at the height
of a cocaine "epidemic" that was galvanizing concerned parents and
authorities; her "Just Say No" advertisements, bumper stickers and T-shirts
were ubiquitous. Then, in 1987, a collective of advertising professionals
created the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, hoping to do pro-bono work
as a private contribution to the War on Drugs, and began peppering the
airwaves with their own anti-drug advertising. The goal was to "decrease
demand for drugs by changing societal attitudes which support, tolerate or
condone drug use." The idea was to condition kids to reject drugs, using
the same branding and market-testing principles that sell Crest toothpaste
and Nike sneakers.

According to the 1979 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 34.4 percent
of all American high school seniors reported having tried drugs, and 18.5
percent said they had done so in the last 30 days. By 1992, that figure had
dropped to 17.9 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively. Believers in the
power of anti-drug advertising invariably point to this impressive
reduction in drug use as evidence that campaigns like "Just Say No" and
those created by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America actually work.
Then, drug use began climbing again in the 1990s, as evidenced by the
statistics: By 1997, 11.4 percent of all high schoolers had done drugs in
the last 30 days. The rise coincided with the waning of the anti-drug
advertising movement, a parallel that proponents of the campaign also used
as "proof" of its efficacy when lobbying Congress for new funds.

But as much as the precipitous fall and rise of drug use in the 1980s and
1990s looked like evidence of successful anti-drug advertising, some
researchers are wary of directly connecting the two. Robert Hornik, a
professor of communication at the Annenberg School of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the researcher behind a new study of the effectiveness of
anti-drug ads, says that there's a "possible correlation" between the ads
and statistics of this period, but the drop in drug use could have had as
much to do with any number of factors: youth disillusionment with drugs, as
cocaine wreaked its havoc and ran its course; plus a general nationwide
furor that kept drugs in the public eye.

"There was much more noise in the environment about drugs during that
period," Hornik says. "So the number of exposures someone would have had
[to messages] about drugs was much more substantial."

When drug use again began to rise in the late 1990s, the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America and the ONDCP renewed their efforts: They began working
together, and in 1998 they launched the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign. Congress apportioned some $1 billion to pay for advertising space
for the ads produced by the two groups, and an anti-drug media blitz
flooded the nation with an assortment of anti-drug advertisements. Despite
the drop in drug use, the "Just Say No" message was declared irrelevant: It
was the message of a former administration, and had long been eviscerated
by both press and youth as the simplistic message of an exceedingly unhip
First Lady. The government shifted gears and came up with a new series of
approaches.

Although the ONDCP has been releasing its own anti-drug ad campaigns since
the 1980s, the new National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign fomented a more
regimented strategy for that group.

Over the last four years, the ONDCP has released a series of "platform"
advertisements: the "Negative Consequences" platform, for example, includes
ads that depict kids getting in trouble when they do drugs; the "Resistance
Skills" platform includes tips on how to say "no" to peer pressure; the
"Parenting Skills" platform instructs parents to talk to their kids about
drugs; the "Norm Education" platform sends the message that "the coolest
kids don't do drugs." The main theme of the ONDCP's campaign has been "The
Anti-Drug" brand, which extends across several platforms and instructs kids
to find their own "anti-drug" (such as music or sports or a pet) to keep
them straight.

When Bush appointed John Walters drug czar in May of last year, drug war
watchdog groups anticipated the beginning of another guns-and-jails era for
the ONDCP, with a greater emphasis on military and criminal punishments.
Walters, a drug "hawk" who had served under William Bennett, was well known
for his moral condemnation of drug use and his criticism of Clinton's drug
war techniques. Although the War on Drugs dropped from the national agenda
in the days after Sept. 11, it came rushing back in January with the
ONDCP's first effort under Walters -- an ad campaign that managed to
conflate moralism and nationalism with a heavy dose of guilt, and which
immediately generated a flurry of both positive and outraged media coverage.

The new ads essentially warn drug users that when they buy drugs, they are
funding terrorism.

In the ads, a series of shrugging teens confess their culpability in a
variety of ugly terrorist activities: "I helped a bomber get a fake passport.

All the kids do it." The tagline: "Drug money supports terror. If you buy
drugs, you might too." The terror-drug ads seemed to usher in a new
philosophy of social guilt: Buying drugs isn't just bad for your body and
your future, but it also makes you personally liable for politically
motivated mayhem.

The drug-terrorism ads were "a definite departure" from the ONDCP's softer
find-your-anti-drug campaigns, which sought to inspire or distract kids
tempted by drugs, says ONDCP spokesperson Jennifer De Vallance. The new
ads, she says, are representative of a new philosophy in the War on Drugs:
"Forever people have said you shouldn't use drugs because it's bad for your
body, bad for your brain, bad for your parents," says de Vallance. "These
ads take a broader perspective." Trying to convince teens that drugs are
bad for them was a losing battle, she adds. "Talking to teenagers is like
talking to Olympian gods, because they see themselves as invulnerable. But
they do appreciate the concept of social responsibility."

Bush personally described the ONDCP's strategy as ushering in a new "period
of personal responsibility" -- moving away from "if it feels good do it" to
an age of "morals." Explained the Office of National Drug Control Policy in
a news release: "Americans must set norms that reaffirm the values of
responsibility and good citizenship while dismissing the notion that drug
use is consistent with individual freedom."

But critics have claimed that the ads are merely heavy-handed propaganda
for the Bush administration's conservative agenda: By associating the War
on Drugs with the popular War on Terrorism, they say, the administration
hopes to curry support for its more militaristic approach to battling drug use.

"There's a new troika driving U.S. drug policy -- Attorney General John
Ashcroft, Asa Hutchinson [head of the DEA] and Walters," says Ethan
Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization
that advocates drug war reform and harm-reduction approaches to drug abuse.
"All three of them are interested in drug policy primarily in terms of
advancing a more reactionary political agenda in the U.S. They are making
an effort to resuscitate the Bennett-politicized drug war of a decade ago."

(In the weeks following the release of the ads, Walters also announced a
new plan to reduce national drug use by 25 percent, relying heavily on
interdiction, criminal justice, and military approaches, with additional
dollars going to specialized treatment programs.

Meanwhile, the DEA staged two high-profile drug busts, including one on the
controversial legalized cannabis clubs of San Francisco.)

Even those in the advertising industry concur that the drug-terror
advertisements appear to have as much to do with maintaining support for
the government's efforts as they do with actually reducing drug use. If the
administration associates policy of any kind with the popular War on
Terrorism, say veterans of the advertising industry, it is likely to
maintain high approval ratings.

As Mark DiMassimo, C.E.O. of DiMassimo Advertising (and the creator of a
series of Ecstasy ads for the Partnership for a Drug Free America), puts
it, "This is wartime propaganda. It's sort of like going back to World II
and World War I when they related what you eat and don't eat -- whether you
threw out leftover rice -- to the war effort."

But even as the debate rages about the nuance and approach in this
campaign, new research shows that, regardless of their content or gimmick,
anti-drug advertisements aren't necessarily making an impression on the
audience they are meant to sway anyway.

The political propaganda behind the terror-drug ads would be forgivable,
theoretically, if the ads were actually convincing vast numbers of American
youth to steer clear of drugs. But judging by the most recent research on
anti-drug advertising efficacy, the ONDCP may need to return to the drawing
board.

It is possible, of course, that guilt about terrorism as a means of
enforcing "social responsibility" will, in fact, cause drug usage to
plummet dramatically. Maybe teens really will steel themselves with
thoughts of Osama bin Laden the next time someone offers them a joint, and
just say no. (Never mind the fact that the joint was more likely to come
from Humboldt County than Afghanistan or Iraq.) But the experts aren't
counting on it, partly because recent reports show that, in general,
there's no concrete link between anti-drug propaganda and teen drug use rates.

According to de Vallance, the new terror-drug ads have been hugely
successful -- both because of the buzz they've created (some 175 articles
have been written about the campaign already), and because of the impact
they supposedly have had on youth. "These ads, in focus group testing, had
among the highest results of reducing intention to use that we've seen in
the history of the campaign," says de Vallance, who reports that more than
70 percent of the focus group teens said the ads would deter them from
trying drugs.

While encouraging, the focus group reports do not ensure that the
drug-terror ads will work. In fact, it is quite possible that, in these
days of fulsome anti-terror rhetoric, the focus group teens felt pressured
to report that they wouldn't support terrorism by doing drugs.

When the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign launched in 1998, a
massive research effort launched with it: With more than $1 billion
apportioned for anti-drug advertising, the stakes were high enough to
initiate a process to establish whether the money was well spent.

The effort was spearheaded by Westat, an independent research group in
Maryland, with the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School conducting
much of the actual research.

Every six months, researchers visit some 8,000 kids and their parents in
their homes to interview them about their personal drug use and the ads
they've seen. (They are promised anonymity.) Three reports have been issued
since the research began in September 1999; three more are still to come.

In October of 2001, the researchers published their latest report assessing
the cumulative effectiveness of all the new ads that had been issued by the
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign since its launch.

The good news was that drug ads targeting parents often do encourage
parents to talk to their kids about drugs.

The bad news was that, thus far, the media campaign hadn't had a measurable
impact on the kids at all.

The average kid is currently seeing an anti-drug ad 2.7 times a week,
according to Robert Hornik, Annenberg School professor and the scientific
director of the report. "We're seeing lots of reports of exposure," says
Hornik. But "we haven't seen any real change over time, and no real
association between exposure and outcomes." This means that the kids see
the ads, but it doesn't seem to have an immediate impact on their drug-use
behavior.

Hornik warns that the October data represents only 18 months' worth of
research, and that there will be three more reports: "It could be that it
will take more time for the kids to be affected," he says. Still, Hornik's
report isn't the only one with bad news for anti-drug advertisers: In the
American Journal of Public Health, an unrelated group of University of
Pennsylvania researchers also discovered that many of the approaches used
by anti-drug ads are not only ineffective, but often even encourage kids to
do drugs.

"Although there is some evidence that mass media campaigns can be
successful, most studies evaluating mass media campaigns have found little
or no effect," the report posits.

The researchers selected 30 anti-drug advertisements created by the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America in the last four years and showed them
to 3,608 students in grades 5 through 12. Afterwards, they interviewed the
students about their responses to the ads. The researchers broke down the
ads into categories -- ads that focused on the negative consequences of
drug use (i.e., "This is your brain on drugs"), ads that focused on
self-esteem issues (i.e., "The anti-drug"), ads that stressed "Just say
no," as well as celebrity testimonials; and a category of ads about the
dangers of heroin or methamphetamines. They then used the students'
responses to measure the overall efficacy of each approach.

The results were decidedly mixed.

Researchers discovered that 16 ads seemed to be effective in discouraging
drug use; but another eight ads had no measurable effect whatsoever, and
six ads actually spurred the viewer to either want to go try the drugs, or
feel less confident about how to reject them. Unfortunately, the ads that
had the greatest impact on the viewers were the ones that scared kids away
from heroin and methamphetamines -- drugs which most teens are not likely
to try anyway.

The least effective ads were the ones that addressed marijuana and "drugs
in general" -- ironically, the drugs that most teens are doing in the first
place.

As the report concluded, "it may be much more difficult to change young
people's beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding use of marijuana than
use of 'harder drugs' ... The PSAs appear to have the biggest impact on
those who seem to need them the least; or, those who most need to be
influenced by these PSAs (i.e., those who do not view these risky behaviors
as harmful or dangerous) are least likely to view the PSAs as effective."
In other words, the kids who are already prone to try drugs aren't going to
be discouraged by what they see in the ads; and the kids who wouldn't try
them anyway are going to be most affected.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America acknowledges the results of the
study, but has no plans to change its approach.

In general, says Steve Dnistrian, the executive vice president of the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, it's difficult to find concrete
evidence that advertising does or doesn't work; to draw a direct line of
cause (advertisement) with effect (purchase, or, in the case of drugs, lack
thereof).

"There is no perfect way to measure advertising effectiveness," he says.
"These [research results] are numbers we would take on any day of the week;
in our mind, this is a very, very strong case to be made for the
effectiveness of these ads. It also points to the issue that we've known
for a long time -- no single ad will do the trick, which is why you need
multiple ads and multiple strategies."

Dnistrian does have a point: Critical as many people are of many anti-drug
campaigns, it's difficult to advocate that they be completely removed from
the airwaves.

Even if the ads aren't individually effective, they keep the issue of drugs
in the public dialogue.

And during those serendipitous times when anti-drug ads dovetail with
national alarm over a topic -- the influence of "Big Tobacco," or the
sudden widespread use of crack -- it is likely that they influence a broad,
if brief, disgust with all drugs.

But even if anti-drug campaigns succeed in keeping drugs in the public
consciousness, there is a nagging issue, exposed in research, that some ads
are so bad that they alienate their intended audience.

Advertising executive DiMassimo says the ONDCP's ads are particularly
egregious, at least from an advertising executive's point of view: "The
ONDCP generates long lists of approved messaging: Much of it comes out in
the clunky language of social scientists, and it is a source of amusement
and consternation among the creative people and communication professionals
who make up the Partnership."

The various advertising agencies that contribute to the Partnership's
campaign tend to use traditional tools in creating their ads. DiMassimo
describes this as "going to hang out with teens, learn about them, and then
coming back with details in their language, like a cultural
anthropologist." This type of saturation research works much of the time,
he says, admitting that some ad industry veterans who have used this
approach to make anti-drugs ads have often missed the mark as well.

Based on his own experience advertising to kids, DiMassimo believes that
ads that try to be "cool" are the ones that will be received most
skeptically -- for example, the clunky series of ads that educated
teenagers onhow to say "no" to the drugged out "cool" kids who hang out at
"hip" parties.

The ads appeared to have been made by out-of-touch authorities who have no
idea how kids dress, talk or dance.

The biggest mistake, says DiMassimo, is when the ads "overstate the danger"
of drugs. "Kids believe anti-drug people are stiff, uptight, overnervous
parental-type figures, and when you overdo it you play in to that side of
the brand," he says. Kids know perfectly well that drugs are fun, he says,
and there is little point in trying to tell them otherwise, a la "Reefer
Madness." He describes the best kind of ad as a cost-benefit analysis: "The
Partnership's work on marijuana is understated -- we say that no one says
pot will kill you, but that there are better things to be than a burnout."
He uses the ONDCP's terrorism ads as an example of the worst kind of
authoritarian browbeating of teens and believes most kids will know that
the ads are overstated.

Still, DiMassimo's own campaign -- the Partnership's ambitious new
anti-Ecstasy initiative -- could be accused of overstatement. Twenty-seven
people out of an estimated 3.4 million who used Ecstasy between 1994 and
1999 died under the influence of the drug; yet the new campaign chooses to
focus on the death of one young woman as a warning against using the drug.
You could say that the ads are merely focusing on the worst-case scenario,
but kids who are aware of just how rare Ecstasy deaths are might simply
reject the ads wholesale as authoritarian exaggeration. Other anti-Ecstasy
ads are equally dramatic, depicting teens partying it up on E while their
friend lies passed out and alone in the bathroom, under the tagline
"Ecstasy: Where's the Love?"

Critics of anti-drug advertising who follow this research wonder whether
ads that try to discourage kids from doing drugs aren't mostly futile.

They often insist that the money would be better spent addressing kids who
do drugs and need help dealing with their addiction. "Everything the ONDCP
and Partnership does is focused on 'Just Say No,' mostly scare tactics, and
occasionally a positive message about why you shouldn't choose drugs," says
Nadelmann. "We think you should do messages directed at young people who
are already experimenting or doing drugs, aimed at keeping them out of
trouble." He notes: "Surveys show that campaigns directed at getting people
to not do things are the least effective."

Drug war reformers like Nadelmann and David Borden, executive director of
the liberal Drug Reform Coordination Network, tend to support peer
education programs and harm-reduction principles over blanket advertising
(and, similarly, they prefer legalization or treatment to expensive
interdiction). "You have to meet people where they are. Every young person
is in a different place, so the programs that will work the best are the
ones that are run by or with their peers," says Borden. "You can't do that
by running ads during the Superbowl."

It will take months, even years, to know whether the new anti-drug campaign
has an impact on drug use, although Walters has promised that these efforts
and others will reduce drug use by 25 percent by 2007. It is a bold
commitment given that the ingredients of effective anti-drug advertising
remain something of a mystery; and since youthful tastes are as flighty as
the videos on MTV, they probably will remain so for quite some time. But
there is also little evidence to suggest that Walters would get better
results if he moved his $180 million ad dollars to peer education programs
and harm reduction groups.

The terror-drug ads are perhaps best viewed as a public relations machine
for the Bush administration, summing up in a few words (and a lot of
taxpayer money) the government's moral philosophies, the way "Just Say No"
summed up the Reagan era.

Government drug propaganda is just that: propaganda veiled as a behavior
modification tool. It seems that no number of simplistic, catchy anti-drug
slogans can fully shape America's convoluted and varied attitude towards
drugs. Even certain Bush family members have been known to stray, and
surely Bush Senior told them all about "Just Say No." Perhaps some
Americans will always have an appetite for drugs, and no remedy --
advertising, interdiction, education or criminal punishment -- will ever
eradicate it.

About the writer Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon Technology.