Pubdate: Fri, 11 Jul 1998
Source: USA Today (US)
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm
Author: Associated Press

WHITE HOUSE UNVEILS ANTI-DRUG AD BLITZ

ATLANTA - Remember that old fried egg ad with its warning, "This is your
brain on drugs"? It's going big time this year, with the federal government
spending $195 million - rivaling the advertising campaigns of American
Express, Nike or Sprint - to plaster the airwaves with anti-drug messages.

The ad campaign, a five-year project being given a bipartisan send-off
Thursday in Atlanta by President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
could turn into a $1 billion government investment in stopping teen drug
use.

"This is an effort to talk to a generation that started to get the wrong
message, "said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who heads Clinton's drug
control policy office. In a 1997 national survey, half of high school
seniors and nearly one-third of eighth-graders reported using illegal drugs
at least once.

Thursday's unveiling promised a brief cease-fire in the sharp election-year
squabbling between Clinton and Republican leaders on everything from drugs
to foreign policy. Gingrich, R-Ga., who rearranged his schedule to be at
the president's side on his own Atlanta turf, said congressional
Republicans were committed to funding the campaign for its full five-year
run.

"It's important first of all to send a signal to young people that whether
you're a Republican or a Democrat, you're committed to getting across the
message that drugs are dangerous. This is a national message, not a
political message," the speaker said in an interview Wednesday.

"The level of support among Republicans in the Congress is strong and
growing. ... We want to break the back of the drug culture over the next
five years," he said.

Politics would be on only a temporary hold. From Thursday's ceremonies in
the Georgia World Congress Center, Gingrich was headed to a Republican
fund-raiser in New York, Clinton to Democratic events in Atlanta and Miami
that would raise $1.3 million for the effort to oust the GOP from control
of Congress. The president also was stopping in Daytona Beach, Fla., to
meet with those who have been fighting the state's raging wildfires.

Beginning Thursday in 75 major newspapers and on the four major TV networks
tonight, parents and a target youth audience between the ages of 9 and 18
will be bombarded by provocative anti-drug ads produced gratis by some of
Madison Avenue's premiere ad agencies. The goal is to hit the average
family least four times a week either through TV, radio, newspapers,
billboards or the Internet.

One of the spots is a spin-off of the fried egg ad popularized during the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America's 11-year campaign, with its Reagan-era
slogan "Just Say No." The updated version, meant to dramatize the effects
of heroin use, shows a Winona Ryder look-alike bust up an egg and her whole
kitchen with a frying pan.

That ad already has been running in 12 test cities where it generated a
300% increase in calls to a national clearinghouse of information on drug
use, McCaffrey said.

The nationwide government campaign is the 15th-largest single-brand ad
project, larger than the media buys of American Express, Nike and Sprint,
said Steve Dnistrian, senior vice president of the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America.

McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control Policy will spend at least
$150million of the appropriation solely on air time.

Advertising Age figures for 1997 show that for single-brand ads, Sprint
spent$149 million for air time, American Express financial services $136
million, and Nike $118 million. Chevrolet was No. 1 with a $321 million
campaign.

But federal funding will be vulnerable to Capitol Hill's annual
appropriations process, which is why all sides strived to keep Thursday's
unveiling bipartisan.

A one-year campaign is worthless, Dnistrian said. "Coke and Pepsi don't run
an ad campaign for a year and then walk away. To maintain market share you
have to be out there constantly reminding them."

The Lindesmith Center, a research project of philanthropist George Soros,
who supports free clean needles for intravenous drug users and legalized
marijuana for medical use, issued a statement saying the money would be
better spent on after-school programs and drug treatment.

For more than a decade, Dnistrian's PDFA has rounded up help from the
advertising industry and media outlets - who pitched in as much as $3
billion in free air time - to put out anti-drug ads primarily aimed at
young people.

But since 1991, with the explosion of new competition that cable channels
brought, prime time has been squeezed by network promotions, consigning
public service announcements to the wee hours even as drug use by teens
skyrocketed.

As part of the new ad initiative, the government will ask media outlets to
match the taxpayers' investment dollar for dollar. And McCaffrey hoped the
campaign would live well beyond five years to keep up with successive crops
of young people.

"We'll always have to start over with a new generation of eighth-graders,"
he said. "Some people like to call this a war on drugs. ... It's a war on
ignorance."

By The Associated Press

"The challenge of intellectual life is to be found in dissent against the
status quo at a time when the struggle on behalf of underrepresented and
disadvantaged groups seems so unfairly weighted against them."

- - Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual, xvii.

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