Pubdate: Thu, 03 Apr 2003
Source: Daily Orange, The (NY Edu)
Copyright: 2003 The Daily Orange Corporation
Contact: http://dailyorange.com/main.cfm?include=submit
Website: http://www.dailyorange.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1287
Note: LTE form requires site registration
Author: Steve Krakauer
Note: Steve Krakauer is a freshman in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public 
Communications.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

WHITE HOUSE FINALLY LEARNS DRUG LESSON

America isn't buying the purported link between terrorism and drugs, 
promoted by Washington officials through a five-month ad campaign.

Big surprise.

The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy is ending its $150 
million drugs-and-terror advertising operation. Also ending will be the 
incomplete $8 million per year study, which found the ads were not working.

The commercials feature teen drug users explaining how buying drugs 
supports terrorism. Other ads use a six degrees of separation approach to 
link drug purchases in a local town to funding international terrorists.

Bill Maher, author and outspoken television host, brought the issue to 
light in his latest book, "When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden."

"The real axis of evil in America is the genius of our marketing and the 
gullibility of our people," Maher wrote. "It's a deadly hook-up when you 
can sell 'em anything, and the American people have been sold drug paranoia 
so long it's a tradition."

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which teamed with the ONDCP for 
all previous campaigns, fell noticeably unsupportive of the drug-terrorism 
ads, claiming the commercials were off-strategy.

But the dogmatic drug office continued running the ads, including two Super 
Bowl spots totaling $3 million - a lot of cash for a failed experiment in 
propaganda.

Drug use can be a terrible thing, but it doesn't mean it has ties to other 
terrible things, like terrorism.

"Teenagers who are buying drugs are not killing families in Colombia," 
wrote Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard. "They're not even 
'helping' to kill families in Colombia. They are just buying drugs."

Even if the ONDCP started implementing honest campaigns, past experience 
dictates continued failure.

The results of a National Institute on Drug Abuse survey agreed: "Exposure 
to prevention messages outside school, such as through the media, was 
fairly widespread but appeared to be unrelated to illicit drug use or being 
drunk."

And there lies the faulty logic. After spending millions of taxpayer 
dollars on a fallacious ad campaign, the White House learned teens did not 
respond to the commercials. Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, is still a free man.

It is no surprise the ads didn't work. The five months it took for the 
government to scrap the expensive flop is the real shock.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager