Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
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.
"Talking to teenagers is like talking to Olympian gods," she adds, "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.
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