A Dubious Pitch

American Demographics, May 1, 2002 by Matthew Grimm

The CERD gives higher marks to programs it labels "Just Say Know," which more realistically assess the pharmacological landscape teens find themselves in, advise kids on the relative safety of illicit drugs and counsel users on how to staunch their habits. This, the government has long argued - in linear fashion - essentially condones drug use. But dissent from official policy is not, as the pat reactionary response usually has it, the advocacy of cocaine or ecstasy use, but rather valid scrutiny of how taxpayer money is most efficiently spent. And in that regard, Brown says, critique is necessary. "The clear issue is a relationship between money spent on these massive campaigns and whether young people's drug use goes up and down," he says. "If you want to make a correlation between the cost and changes in behavior as a result, then you're not making much of a case."

The University of Michigan's influential "Focus on the Future" annual study found that while 8th graders who had used "any illicit drug" had declined to 19.5 percent in 2001 from 23.6 percent in 1996. Older teens weren't so chaste; "any illicit drug" use rose to 37.2 percent in 2001 from 21.4 percent in 1991 among 10th graders, and to 41.4 percent from 29.4 percent among 12th graders. Use of illicit drugs has remained generally flat, from highs of 38.5 percent and 42.4 percent in 1997, the year before the ONDCP campaign began, to 37.2 percent and 41.4 percent last year.

Use of marijuana or hashish in 2001 grew 0.5 percent among both 10th and 12th graders. And while cocaine use declined slightly, just above 6 percent of 10th graders and 9.2 percent of 12th graders used ecstasy in 2001, up sharply from 3.9 percent and 4 percent in 1997, respectively.

The ONCDP says it is not trying to judge, but to spur dialogue. "This is not necessarily to blame every act of terror on the purchase of every single joint across the country," says Jennifer de Vallance, ONDCP press secretary. "These kids know drugs are bad for them, but [our campaign] presents to them a consequence they might not have thought about before, namely the notion that, in this kind of business, you don't know where your money is going."

Prior to airing, the ONDCP ran its campaign past focus groups and found that vast majorities of 'tweens and teens said it significantly reduced their intent to use drugs, while parents said it gave them new ways to discuss the subject with their kids, de Vallance said. Still, while the research showed 81 percent of teens and young adults considered the "I Helped" ad believable, that was 10 percent less than adults. And only teens, not young adults, indicated their interest in using drugs was significantly reduced after seeing the ad, according to an abstract of the research provided by the ONDCP.

On its Web site, the ONDCP backs its ads' claims, listing groups that the State Department has classified as terrorist and engaged in narco-trafficking. One of them is the AUC, a Colombian confederation of right-wing paramilitaries long tolerated by and allegedly allied with the U.S.-trained and -equipped Colombian military. The AUC is reportedly responsible for 70 percent to 80 percent of the murders in that country, according to various human rights groups' audits, including most of the 3,800 labor unionistas killed since 1986. Last July, the United Steelworkers and its Colombian affiliate union named Coca-Cola in a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Florida, alleging that the soda giant, its Colombian bottler and the owner of a plant in the city of Carepa employed the AUC to murder labor leader Edgar Paez and to terrorize the union out of the city.