Los Angeles Times
ANTI-DRUG PITCH GOES WIDE
When Congress launched
the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign five years
ago, it explicitly
tied future funding to hard evidence of success. Today,
there is anything but
that. Teenagers are increasingly using the illicit drugs
the campaign has
most often railed against, according to a recently released,
congressionally
mandated study.
The Pride Survey found that from 2001 to 2002, for
instance, marijuana use was
up among all grades studied (sixth through 12th)
except for the 10th grade,
which showed a 0.1% decline.
Marijuana use
nearly doubled, from 2.9% to 5.2%, among sixth-graders and rose
from 7.2% to
10.2% among eighth-graders.
Congress should at least cast a skeptical eye
on the Bush administration's
request to expand the media campaign with $170
million in funding next year,
$20 million more than it received last year.
The media campaign's concerns have
often been legitimate. It is quite
reasonably trying to reach the one in six
high school seniors in the United
States who report driving under the influence
of pot, more than half of whom
say, alarmingly, that being stoned does not
compromise their driving
ability.
However, the way in which the campaign has tried to get its
messages across is
stodgy and unlikely to connect with kids. "There has
always been a lot of talk
about drunk driving, but another problem is Drugged
Driving," one new ad reads.
"Just like alcohol, if you are driving under the
influence of drugs, your
response times are slow and you could be distracted.
Have you ever been in a
car where someone wanted to drive
drugged?
What did you do? What would you do?" Drug czar John P. Walters
has mismanaged
the media campaign in other ways - using taxpayer dollars to
directly attack
state medical marijuana programs and ballot initiatives, for
instance. This
spring, Walters boasted to Congress about a study conducted by
the Partnership
for a Drug-Free America (which, in a blatant conflict of
interest, helps
produce the campaign's ads). The "good news," he said, was
the study's
conclusion that "40% of teens said that anti-drug advertising
made them less
likely to try or use drugs." A more independent study released
by the
University of Pennsylvania this year not only found "no evidence of a
positive
effect," it concluded that teens who saw the ads "tended to move
more markedly
in a 'pro-drug' direction in their attitudes over time."
Sermons to teens can
often have a boomerang effect, leading them to dismiss
the real dangers the
sermons are railing against.
That, however, is
not the lesson Walters took home from the Pennsylvania study.
When its
skeptical results came in, he opted not to renew the
university's
contract.
Turning a blind eye to unwelcome facts is no
way to run an effective anti-drug
campaign.