A Dubious Pitch

American Demographics, May 1, 2002 by Matthew Grimm

Byline: Matthew Grimm

You may have seen an old print ad for Scott Towels, now reproduced for its kitsch value, that depicts a sinister man with a pencil mustache washing his hands. The headline over him asks: "Is your wash room breeding Bolsheviks?"

Delivered with straight-faced urgency at a time when American opinion makers saw Reds in every corner and crevice, we now find the reasoning - that keeping the hands tidy will help staunch employee discontent possibly leading to Communist infiltration - laughable, anachronistic paranoia. Distant as it is, it invokes a similar kind of logic that informs the most recent communications campaign from the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which seeks to convince America's youth that it assists the war on terrorism by abstaining from drug use. But it's a pitch whose blanket logic, upon closer examination, proves self-defeating.

The campaign, the latest in a $2 billion media program begun in 1998, raised some eyebrows, and hackles, when it broke during February's Super Bowl broadcast with a stark message to America's youth: If you do drugs, you support terrorism. The two spots for the "Drugs and Terror Initiative" pulled no punches as they drew hard lines from consumption of illicit substances to illicit, shadowy groups the world over that have, since Sept. 11, been lumped under a general demonic aegis. The ads featured young people juxtaposing staple rationalizations of drug use with cause/effect realities. "I helped murder families in Colombia," says one. "It was just innocent fun," says another. "I helped kidnap people's dads," says one. "Hey, some harmless fun," says another. Then the ONDCP ups the ante, thumb squarely on a still-exposed nerve. "I helped a bomber get a fake passport," says one. "I helped blow up buildings." Then the coup de grace: "My life, my body. It's not like I was hurting anybody else."

Both Republican and Democratic conservatives have long argued that drug use involves a choice, and the choice to use drugs represents a criminal character flaw. The implication is obvious in the current campaign, and not surprising, given that it comes at a period in history when the state has been given broad license to marshal consensus, specifically for the "War on Terrorism."

Now, as it engages a terrorist conspiracy on all fronts, the "zero-tolerance" of President George W. Bush's foreign policy has manifest foursquare in the ONDCP's campaign; no gray area need be considered. But this has always been the most contentious issue of anti-drug communications. By using mass marketing tools, the ONDCP and its allies, such as the ad industry's Partnership for a Drug-Free America, have undertaken a necessary effort to deter youth drug use by dubious means - applying blanket statements and simplistic solutions to deeply personal issues that vary by individual.

Indeed, the biggest problem many behavioral researchers have with the government campaign is that it foists linear thought (A or B, Yes or No) upon kids in the throes of realizing that they live in a three-dimensional world. Scare tactics and castigation may seem the way to address developing minds regarding social taboos, but according to studies by the Berkeley-Calif.-based Center for Educational Research and Development (CERD), such approaches do more long-term harm than short-term good. "When young people recognize that they are being taught to follow directions, rather than to make decisions, they feel betrayed and resentful," CERD chief Joel Brown summed up in a report in The American School Board Journal in December 1997.

Specifically, zero tolerance may well fly in the face of young people's experiences. The oft-used example is that, while the government warns them away from marijuana with equal vehemence as cocaine or heroin, use of the former will likely yield the assessment that it is benign by comparison. The impression is that not only did anti-drug instructors and ads lie or exaggerate, but that similar voices of authority must be similarly taken with a grain or more of salt, an outlook of "cognitive dissonance." And though the ONDCP campaign broaches real-world ramifications beyond just use, the stark correlation with the bloody war in Colombia, much less the destruction of the World Trade Center, presents another reach to the extreme polar opposite of "good behavior."

"This is exploiting [Sept. 11], using people with health problems, drug addicts, as a scapegoat for terrorism," says Darrell Rogers, national outreach coordinator at Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the national student group formed in 1998 in opposition to the Higher Education Act, which denies federal aid to potential college students convicted of misdemeanor drug offenses.

Judgmental policies on the government's part are the crux of its missteps, CERD's Brown told American Demographics. CERD has audited vast tracts of anti-drug program research, much of which has shown a pattern of what he calls "disintegrative shaming." "The goal," Brown says, "is to present a graphic description of a negative effect of drugs, and make a young person feel internally contradicted, confused. Nowhere is this more true than where, under zero-tolerance policy, they see kids who might need help being kicked out of school for first-time offenses."