HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/drugs/condoning

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 12.4 KB

From: Jim Rosenfield <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Date: 26 Sep 94 17:56 PDT
Subject: Re: Nation Article on P.D.F.A.
Message-ID: <1484000721@cdp>

Hard Sell in the The Drug War

CONDONING THE LEGAL STUFF?

by CYNTHIA COTTS   as appeared in "The Nation"

"This is your brain on drugs," goes the fried egg ad. "Any
questions?" -After seeing the ad some teenagers have stopped
taking drugs-and some 4 yearolds have stopped eating eggs. "Fried
Egg" is one of hundreds of ads released under the imprimatur of
the Partnership for a Drug-Frei America. Launched in 1986 in New
York City, this nonprofit group uses advertising to reduce the
demand for illegal drugs. It's a flashy concept, but, as "Fried
Egg" demonstrates, propaganda can breed misconceptions.  The
Partnership means well, but it sends a self-serving message. The
ads themselves exaggerate and distort, relying on scare tactics to
get people's attention. Ad strategies are based on market research
rather than public health policy. Even worse, the Partnership has
accepted $5.4 million in contributions from legal drug
manufacturers, while producing ads that overlook the dangers of
tobacco,- alcohol and pills. This "drug-free" crusade is actually
a silent partner to the drug industry, condoalng the use of "good"
drugs by targeting only the "bad" ones.
 Of course, the pharmaceutical and advertising industries havc
long bccn intertwined. James Burke, who resigned as chairman and
C.E.O. of Johnson & Johnson in 1989 to become chairman of the
Partnership, is no stranger to marketing. In the `nid-1980s, he
engineered a classic campaign to restore public confidence in
Tylenol after the cyanide scare.
  A few years later, Johnson & Johnson sued Bristol-Myers Squibb
for claiming in its advertising that Aspirin-Free Excedrin is a
better pain reliever than Extra-Strength Tylenol.  At the
Partnership, Burke has implemented a concept borrewed from the
pharmaceutical industry: If ads can sell drugs, they can unsell
them, too.
  Mote than 100 agencies have made Partnership ads pro bono, and
the media kick in ad space and air time for free.  The incentive?
Creative directors get to show off, giving their ads titles like
"Candy Store" and "Tricks of the Trade" and submitting them for
industry awards. The actors involved get exposure, and the media
outlets can pat themselves on the back for contributing to a good
cause.
  Typically, Partnership ads are melodramatic They trade on scare
tactics (the school-bus driver snorts coke) and stereo-types
(black boys sell crack in the schoolyard). With their hard line on
marijuana, Partnership ads revive an old message: One puff, and
you're hooked. Dr. Gil Botven, who studies drug abuse prevention
programs at Cornell Medical College, thinks "what the Partnership
is doing is great." But, he adds, "scare tactics have never been
demonstrated to be effective."
  Partnership spokeswoman Theresa Grant doesn't like the
term "scare tactics." "We feel it's appropriate to arouse
peo-ple's attention," she says. A recent print ad shows a preteen
in a denim jacket under the headline, "What she's going
through isn't a phase. It's an ounce a week." The ad copy
alerts parents to the dangers of pot smoking, and in doing so,
it exggerares slightly-not many 10-year-olds could afford
an ounce of marijuana a week, let alone smoke it and stay on
their feet. When questioned about the exaggeration, Grant
said the ad had just come under review. A few weeks later, the
"Not Just a Phase" girl was back, taking up a full~page in The
New York Times.
  Fact checking is a sensitive issue for the Partnership. They've
caught so much flak over the years for inaccuracies that the
review process has been overhauled; now, the factual content of
all ads is scrutinized before they're produced.  The first
screamer was a 1987 TV ad depicting the brain wave of a l4
year-old smoking pot. It was actually the brain wave of a coma
patient. In 1990 Scientific American uncovered some cooked figures
in a cocaine ad. Those early mistakes were really "born of
naivete," says Grant. "Nobody intentionally distorted facts. In
those days, they reaily thought they had the kind of
substantiation they needed."
  A 19% pnint-ad reels off marijuana slang terms and concludes,
"No matter what you call it, don't call it harmless?'  The ad
cites potential damage to the lungs and reproductive system. But
calls to the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute
on Drug Abuse (N.I.D.A.) didn't turn up any casualties, just a lot
of inconclusive studies. One study did find "reduced gas exchange
capacity" in the lungs of fifteen women who were chronic pot
smokers. As for reproductive risks, scientists have iqjected a lot
of pregnant monkeys with THC, the key psychoactive chemical in
marijuana, but they've yet to come up with hard evidence, In fact,
the health issue is "nebulous," Grant concedes, so the Partnership
is switching its tack on marijuana. Future ads won't tell you it's
dangerous, just that it's uncool.
  Like its mentors in the pharmaceutical industry, the Partncrship
has learned to backpedal. In the fall of 1990 the campaign sent
ads to Alaskans for a Drug-Free Youth, a parent group that was
campaigning to put recriminallzation of marijuana on the ballot.
Recriminalization was passed that November, and the Partnership
crowed about the victory in its Winter 1991 newsletter.
  When asked about the Partnership's effort, Grant denies a
political motive. "It wasn't any different than if we provided
messages to a community group in Iowa," she says. "I must
be remiss, because I never looked at it from the perspective
of assisting in a political campaign."

To maintaln its good reputation, the Partnership has to offer hard
proof of advertising's impact on drug abuse. So, even though
experts have concluded that media campaigns do not in themselves
change behavior, Burke goes around trumpeting the power of the
media to save children from drugs.  Burke is echoed by Mathca
Falco, a former Assistant Secretary of State for International
Narcotics Matters, who is now writing a book on drug prevention
programs. The Partnership's greatest achievement, says Falco, is
to convey the message that using drugs is silly. They're making it
socially unacceptable, and that's the best way to bring about
social change"
  No one can prove that the ads are responsible for declining
drug use or indeed that all drug use is down. The latest
government surveys show a rise in the use of cocaine and heroin
by urban youth, and in the use of LSD by college students
nationwide.
  When he needs proof Burke can quote the Partnership Attitude
Tracking Survey (PATS), conducted annually at the Partnership's
behest by the Gordon S. Black Corporation.  The PATS research
suggests a correlation between teens who have seen the antidrug
ads, teens who disapprove of drug use and teens who say no to
drugs. But when Burke cites PATS, he doesn't mention that Gordon
Black is a market research firm, or that PATS is based on "mall
intercepts." That is, participants fill out questionnaires
anonymously at shopping malls in sample locations. Confidentiality
is thus guaranteed, but accuracy is not.


The Partnership ignores cigaiettes, alcohol and pills.


 At the University of Michigan, Dr. Lloyd Johnston, a research
scientist, conducts an annual survey of high school students for
N.I.D.A. According to Johnston, the mall intercepts are an
inexpensive method of measuring trends, but they lack the sampling
precision of a household survey. Nonetheless, Johnston's surveys
do bolster the PATS conclusions.
  Most teens remember the antidrug ads and report being influenced
by them. "There's no guarantee advertising did it per se" says
Johnston, "but it's clear things have moved in the right
direction. "The PATS five-year summary reports that illegal drug
use by students is dropping, but falls to mention that tobacco and
alcohol are still teenagers' drugs of choice. Johnston's latest
statistics show that 40 percent of tenth graders report drinking
within the past month and getting very drunk within the past year.
"The other thing that comes out of our surveys," says Johnston,
"is that smoking has not dropped among young people for almost a
decade." Nineteen percent of high school seniors are dally tobacco
smokers, and hundreds of thousands of them, Johnston sadly
predicts, will die of lung cancer one day.
  The Partnership has traditionally attacked marijuana, cocaine
and crack, drugs deemed widely available to schoolchildren. But if
the Partnership's mission is to stop kids from experimenting in
the first place, why not go after cigarettes and beer? The answer
is obvious. According to Falco, "It would be suicidal if the
Partnership took on the alcohol and tobacco industries. The
Partnership is living off free advertising product and space, and
the media and ad agencies live off alcohol and tobacco
advertising." Theresa Grant acknowledges that the deeision to
focus on illegal drugs was "pragmatic." based on the desire to
"get the airtime and spacc and not alienate the people who are
making this possible." The Partnership's condoning of legal drugs
doesn't bother Falco. "The message may not be complete"' she
chirps, "but it's better than nothing!" Many public health
researchers, however, are concerned about a new generation of
teens who smoke' drink and pop pills.  Experts believe that
children begin using drugs in the order of availability, and
they're more likely to try marijuana if they've already tried
alcohol and cigarettes. "The natural thing in a prevention
campaign," says Dr. Botven, "would be to focus on the three
gateway substances: alcohol, tobaeco and marijuana. The
Partnership starts with marijuana, and my concern is they're
skipping the most important ones in terms of fatality." Johnston
believes the Partnership has the ability to target legal drug
abust, and says he "would be delighted if they would." When asked
if he thinks that could happen, he pauses. "A betting man would
say no."
  In the Partnership's early days, its primary supporter was the
American Association of Advertising Agencies. That group knew
better than to alienate the legal drug industry. But the mandate
must have been reinforced in 1989, the year Burke camie from
Johnson & Johnson, bringing with him a $3 million grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a prominent health care
philanthropy. The foundation described its unusually handsome
grant to the Partnership as "pivotal in leveraging ... support
from other private foundations."
  On cue, the other foundations rolled over.  In 1989 and 1990,
the ten largest foundation grants for alcohol and drug abuse
totaled $12.4 million. The Partnership took $4.7 million from that
pool, or 38 percent. Many an individual donor gave its largest
antidrug grant to the Partnership. In other words, the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation accelerated a trend: the channeling of
foundation money into public awareness, which is considered a less
effective form of drug-abuse prevention than school- and
community-based programs.
  The Partnership's funders are usually kept secret, says Grant,
to protect them from other grant seekers and from the legalization
lobby.  But the Partnership's 1991 tax return reveals another
motive for secrecy: conspicuous support from the legal drug
industry.  From 1988 to 1991, pharmaceutical companies and their
beneficiaries contributed as follows: the J. Seward Johnson, Sr,
Charitable Trusts ($1,100,000); Du Pont ($150,000); the Procter &
Gamble Fund ($120,000); the Bristol- Myers Squibb Foundation
($110,000); Johnson & Johnson ($110,000); Smith Kline Beecham
($100,000); the Merck Foundation ($75,000); and Hoffman-La Roche
($30,000).
  Pharmaceuticals and their beneficiaries alone donated 54 percent
of the $5.8 million the Partnership took from its top twenty-five
contributors from 1988 to 1991. That 54 percent is conservative.
It doesn't include donations under $90,000, and it doesn't include
donations from the tobacco and alcohol kings: The Partnership has
taken $150,000 each from Philip Morris, nheuser-Busch and RJR
Reynolds, plus $100,000 from American Brands (Jim Beam. Lucky
Strike).
 Coincidence?  Hardly. The war on drugs is a war on illegal drugs,
and the prtnership's benefactors have a huge stake in keeping it
that way. They know that when schoolchildren learn that marijuana
and crack are evil, they're also learning that alcohol, tobacco
and pills are as American as apple pie.