BY B.G. GREGG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
One of the new ads is a spinoff of the "This is your brain on drugs" ad. The updated version, about heroin, shows a young woman smashing an egg with her fryingh pan and tearing up her kitchen.
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The nation's battle against illegal drugs is intensifying, and it kicked off Thursday with a blitzkrieg of anti-drug messages in newspapers and on television networks across the nation.
The campaign will continue for at least a year and cost as much as $195 million as President Clinton, Congress and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America do something unprecedented in the fight against drugs: use taxpayer money to pay for anti-drug ads.
"Up until now, everywhere, on all levels, all of the anti-drug media and communications has been donated through the media," said Rob Matteucci, vice president of the Coalition for a Drug-Free Greater Cincinnati, a group that has prepared public service announcements for local media for two years. "This is a step above that."
Mr. Clinton, speaking Thursday in Atlanta, said the government campaign would spend more money than Nike and Sprint spent on advertising last year.
"These ads were designed to knock America upside the head and get America's attention and empower all of you," Mr. Clinton said.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich pledged to muster congressional support for expanding the campaign into a five-year, $1 billion effort.
Full-page advertisements ran Thursday in 75 newspapers, including The Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Post. Cincinnati's four network TV affiliates carried anti-drug spots between 9 and 10 p.m. Thursday.
The bulk of the campaign will focus on TV, but ads produced free by some of Madison Avenue's premiere agencies will also run on radio, billboards and the Internet.
One spot walks viewers past school lockers into a classroom of pint-sized desks. "It's true," the announcer exhorts parents, "the use of marijuana has actually gone down . . . to the fifth grade. Talk to your kids now, before someone else does."
Will the ads work? Some Cincinnati-area teen-agers, interviewed downtown Thursday, just say no.
"I don't think it will help because little kids do what you tell them not to do," said Rico Moore, 17, of Millvale.
"Maybe if they showed the effects more instead of just saying how bad they are, it might work," said Robert Rosen, 15, of Symmes Township. "Maybe show brain-damaged people who have been affected by drugs. People are still going to take drugs anyway. That's just the way it is. But maybe showing the effects would have more impact."
There is research to show media campaigns do work. According to most surveys, drug usage was at its lowest point in the past 30 years in the mid- to late '80s, after years of anti-drug spots from Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
For more than a decade, media outlets gave the Partnership for a Drug-Free America about $3 billion in free air time.
But since the early '90s, with the explosion of competition from cable channels, prime-time broadcasting has been squeezed by network promotions, shoving many public service announcements to the wee hours. Several drug surveys, including one by the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education in Atlanta, show drug use has increased since then.
"It is really difficult to get prime time," Mr. Matteucci said.
So the government decided to spend taxpayer money. Media outlets that receive such advertising are being asked to donate equal amounts of exposure, thus doubling the campaign.
The Coalition for a Drug-Free Greater Cincinnati, established in 1996 by U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park, has been running anti-drug spots in Cincinnati-area media for more than two years. All of those spots were donated.
"Because of the support we're getting from all the local media, we had the third-highest number of public service announcements in the country," Mr. Matteucci said. "It equaled about $750,000 in media. We had great support."
Susan Wilke, executive director of the local coalition, said not enough time has passed to evaluate whether the ads have had an effect on local drug use, but she is sure the message is getting across.
"Media advertising does shape people's attitudes and behavior," she said. With the federal government's commitment, she said, "there's going to be a very strong and very consistent message out there. The stronger the message, the better off we will be."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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