In declaring the opioid epidemic a public health emergency last week, President Trump promised that the federal government would start "a massive advertising campaign to get people, especially children, not to want to take drugs in the first place." But past efforts to prevent substance abuse through advertising have often been ineffective or even harmful. Perhaps the most famous American antidrug advertisement featured a sizzling egg in a frying pan to the sound of ominous music and a stern voice-over warning, "This is your brain on drugs." A sequel to this ad featured Rachael Leigh Cook smashing an egg and the better part of a kitchen to dramatize the impact of heroin. [continues 689 words]
KEIZER, Ore. - Two years after voters in Colorado and Washington State broke the ice as the first states to legalize sales of recreational marijuana to adults, residents of Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., will vote next week on ballot measures patterned on those of the two pioneers. People on both sides of the issue say these initiatives could determine whether there will be a national tide of legalization. A changing political landscape has weakened anti-marijuana efforts. As the libertarian movement in the Republican Party has gained force, with leaders like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, supporting decriminalization of marijuana and others going even further, an anchor of the conservative opposition to legalization has eroded. [continues 1361 words]
Lawyer John Morgan And A Casino Mogul Debate Via Email Trial lawyer John Morgan - whose outsized persona is already etched onto Florida's consciousness - said medical marijuana has boosted his celebA-rity even higher. At the Orlando airport last week, eight to 10 people stopped him between the plane and his car to thank him for bankrollA-ing the constitutional amendA-ment to legalize medical marA-ijuana, Morgan said. 'Two or three wanted to have their picA-tures taken with me.' However, none of that hoopla surprised Morgan as much as an email that arrived three months ago from Nevada. [continues 960 words]
PARRISH -- Sitting at the kitchen table in her wheelchair, arms useless at her sides, Cathy Jordan begins another day with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. She turns expectantly to her husband, Robert, who fires up a pungent joint and holds it to her lips. Smoke curls through her blond hair as she inhales, holds and exhales. Jordan is well into her third decade with a disease that often kills within five years. She credits marijuana with slowing progression of the condition that destroys nerve cells, ultimately leading to total paralysis and death. [continues 1959 words]
Marijuana is the only drug Cathy Jordan says helps her fight Lou Gehrig's disease. The 59-year-old mother smokes two joints every night to relieve depression and muscle spasms, and to boost her appetite. "It's keeping me alive," said Jordan in an interview at her home in Parrish. "Anti-depressants made me a zombie and other drugs had bad side effects. The crime is that people like me can't get it legally." Floridians could vote for the first time next year to allow marijuana for medical use. A petition drive, started last week by an Orlando woman whose father has Parkinson's disease, would make the drug legal for any condition as prescribed by a doctor. [continues 1157 words]
In the last decade, when pot-law reform advocates have faced off with the status quo on equal footing, pot reform has won. Initiative backers in a dozen states, for instance, have spent big bucks passing medical-marijuana measures despite fierce opposition from federal officials. Nevertheless, the adult recreational use of pot (as opposed to medical use) doesn't have majority support to pass in any state. Before voters will ever approve that sort of proposal, pot advocates must first change attitudes toward the drug by going toe to toe with the White House's multimillion-dollar antidrug media campaign. [continues 580 words]
A New Study Finds That Fewer Than 1 in 3 American Teens Now Use Marijuana, but Abuse of Pharmaceuticals Is Rising NEW YORK -- There's some very good news in the battle against illicit drugs: Use by America's teens has dropped more than 23 percent during the last five years. But their abuse of medicines, both over-the-counter and prescription, is rising. These opposing trends - detailed in a survey of teens released Thursday - reflect the complexity of the US drug scene. They also present a new set of challenges. The most important: How to apply the prevention tools that have apparently succeeded in combating illegal drug use to fight the abuse of legal medicines. [continues 759 words]
Why The Montana Meth Project Isn't All It's Cranked Up To Be Never has a so-called picture of success sported such a gruesome mug. It was one year ago this September that the Montana Meth Project launched its efforts to transform the face of methamphetamine's impact on the youth of this state. All at once, images of young faux junkies and their nightmarish trappings became omnipresent on Montana's billboards and airwaves and in print media as the $5.5 million campaign, bankrolled by billionaire Tom Siebel, rocketed into place as the state's largest advertiser. The citizens and the media of Montana have responded, by and large, with gusto for the high-profile effort. Most recently, more than 650 teens encouraged by $300,000 in prize money are holding their breath for the Aug. 9 results of the Paint the State contest, for which they created public art incorporating the campaign's "Not Even Once" slogan. Ghastly images and draconian messages--"Curiosity killed the kid," for instance--have turned up in the form of painted barns and cows, emaciated sculptures and crashed cars throughout our communities. [continues 4736 words]
Never has a so-called picture of success sported such a gruesome mug. It was one year ago this September that the Montana Meth Project launched its efforts to transform the face of methamphetamine's impact on the youth of this state. All at once, images of young faux junkies and their nightmarish trappings became omnipresent on Montana's billboards and airwaves and in print media as the $5.5 million campaign, bankrolled by billionaire Tom Siebel, rocketed into place as the state's largest advertiser. The citizens and the media of Montana have responded, by and large, with gusto for the high-profile effort. Most recently, more than 650 teens encouraged by $300,000 in prize money are holding their breath for the Aug. 9 results of the Paint the State contest, for which they created public art incorporating the campaign's "Not Even Once" slogan. Ghastly images and draconian messages--"Curiosity killed the kid," for instance--have turned up in the form of painted barns and cows, emaciated sculptures and crashed cars throughout our communities. [continues 4736 words]
Latest Campaign Focuses On Exaggeration, Not Fear In the 1980s, a frying egg was used as a scary metaphor for a brain sizzling on drugs. Two decades later, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has launched an Above the Influence campaign -- a play on the saying "under the influence" -- to remind teens to just say no to drugs but in a unique way. Unlike the previous ads that have tried to shock teens into action, the new ads use humor, exaggeration and shame to play on teens' desires to maintain their identities and reject negative influences. [continues 832 words]
Critics Say Harder Drugs Deserve More Attention A new government antimarijuana campaign has reignited a long-smoldering debate over how dangerous the most widely used illegal drug in America really is and whether it should be the central focus of the nation's war on drugs. Headlined "Marijuana and your teen's mental health," an advertisement appearing in newspapers and magazines nationwide cites scientific studies in the last seven years that have found that regular use of marijuana in the teenage years can put users at risk of depression, suicidal impulses and schizophrenia later in life. [continues 1180 words]
The Bush administration faces a closer look at how it tries to influence public opinion as it readies campaigns to overhaul Social Security and the tax code, following reports that the Education Department paid a conservative columnist to promote its policies. Armstrong Williams, a prominent commentator and frequent guest on television news shows, lost his syndicated column after disclosures that he was paid $240,000 by the Education Department to promote the "No Child Left Behind" law to other black journalists. In an appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" Saturday, Mr. Williams said, "I used bad judgment," and apologized to his audience. "It's the first time we've done business with the government, but I just would not do it again." [continues 517 words]
NEW YORK -- A grand jury indicted one current and one former senior executive of WPP Group PLC's Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, alleging the pair worked with unidentified co-conspirators to defraud the U.S. government. The indictment also alleges the duo made false claims while working on a lucrative account for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The action surprised Madison Avenue, which largely believed the matter had been resolved after Ogilvy paid $1.8 million to settle civil charges in February 2002. At the time, Ogilvy, one of the ad industry's best-known shops, said it voluntarily withdrew $850,000 in billings to the U.S. because it lacked confidence in the documentation supporting the figure. [continues 761 words]
THE Partnership for a Drug-Free America will introduce today an ad campaign focusing on the drug Ecstasy and backed by the largest donation of media time it has received. The Comcast Corporation - the cable giant, has agreed to donate time valued at $51 million over three years. The campaign and the Comcast deal, to be detailed at the National Press Club in Washington, are efforts to answer two big challenges the partnership says it faces: having parents address the dangers of Ecstasy with their children and putting the most effective messages in front of the right audiences. [continues 1028 words]
The war on terror may be too new to declare victory or defeat. But this nation has been fighting a war on drugs for more than a quarter-century, ever since New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller mandated harsh drug sentencing in 1973--and it may be time to announce that this is one war we've lost. More than a million people are serving time in our prisons and jails for nonviolent offenses, most drug-related, at a cost to the public of some $9.4 billion a year. Many billions more are spent by the states and the federal government on drug interdiction, drug-law enforcement and drug prosecutions. Harsh laws that require lengthy minimum sentences for the possession of even small amounts of drugs have created a boom in the incarceration of women, tearing mothers away from their children. Much of the country's costly foreign-policy commitments--especially in Latin America and the Caribbean--are determined by drug-war priorities. And yet drug use has actually soared, with twice as many teenagers reporting illegal drug use in 2000 as in 1992. [continues 3122 words]
House Republicans anticipated smooth sailing for legislation to reauthorize the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), including its controversial antidrug media campaign. But Democrats rebelled in late May over provisions that would have allowed drug czar John Walters to use the publicly funded advertising as he saw fit to oppose state ballot initiatives or even specific candidates. The ads, mostly on television, have stirred controversy since Walters took over and began running strident drugs-equal-terrorism spots that declare that personal use of marijuana supports terrorism. [continues 924 words]
If Republicans in the House get their way, the nation's drug czar may soon have the power to spend millions of tax dollars to defeat pro-medical marijuana ballot initiatives and candidates. The idea is an unprecedented assault on our democratic system. A provision quietly slipped into this year's Office of National Drug Control Policy's authorization bill would give the White House office the ability to use its annual $195-million antidrug advertising budget to oppose any initiative or candidate supporting the legalization of an illegal drug. The measure would turn the public treasury into a campaign chest for the president's party, allowing the White House to purchase radio, television and print ads in furtherance of its own political goals. The tactic of using the people's money to influence their views and election results has a familiar ring. It follows a script written by the corrupt regimes of Africa and Latin America. [continues 214 words]
If you buy drugs, you are a terrorist. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past year, you have probably seen the aggressive advertising campaign that capitalizes on a loose definition of terrorism to convince you that you are killing people. This is nothing new, as those who grew up in the 1980s can attest to. Everyone should remember the "this is your brain on drugs" campaign, and the girl diving into an empty swimming pool. But the latest barrage of rhetoric focuses on the consequences for others, rather than the user. [continues 432 words]
There Are Burger Joints, And Then There Are Burgers And Joints The fault, Shakespeare once almost said, lies not in our stars but in our stuffing our faces. That sentiment is basically the reasoning behind a federal district court judge's January dismissal of a recent lawsuit against McDonald's, brought by two obese New York City teenagers who claimed that the fast food was at fault for their fat. "Common sense has prevailed," read a statement issued by a no doubt relieved McDonald's, which had probably contemplated a future where "over 99 billion served" would include the word "subpoenas." "The plaintiffs have alleged that the practices of McDonald's in making and selling their products are deceptive and that this deception has caused the minors who have consumed McDonald's products to injure their health by becoming obese," observed Judge Robert W. Sweet in his ruling. In other words, the kids asked, how were we to know that a steady diet of hamburgers and french fries was going to make us fat? And the judge's response was, well, they should know and they therefore "cannot blame McDonald's if they, nonetheless, choose to satiate their appetite with a surfeit of supersized McDonald's products." [continues 478 words]
ANNAPOLIS -- The Montgomery County grandmother leading a national antidrug crusade said the opposition paid top dollar to win passage of a medical-marijuana bill in the Maryland General Assembly but that she's hoping her low-budget lobby can persuade the governor to veto the legislation. "I think their money won out over our facts," said Joyce Nalepka, whose small group of volunteers faced a $50,000 lobbying effort by the District-based Marijuana Policy Project, a group dedicated to decriminalizing marijuana use. [continues 560 words]
