Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Critics say the government's new anti-drug campaign is reactionary and moralistic. Worse, it may not even work.
Mar 12, 2002 | 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.
Get Salon in your mailbox!