A 'war' on drugs, but only a murmur on booze

 Then Congress OK'd an unprecedented taxpayer-funded social marketing advertising campaign to discourage minors from using pot, smack, crack and other illegal drugs through a $1 billion, five-year media blitz commanded by a retired general, drug czar Barry McCaffrey. 

 In contrast, in the wake of seven publicized college binge-drinking deaths last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala didn't declare war on booze. Instead, she asked the governing board of college athletics to adopt voluntary restrictions on college alcohol advertising. 

To public health advocates, it's just politics as usual. 

Alcohol industry political action committees have already given members of Congress $1 million in the past (off-election) year. It is hardly a surprise that alcohol will receive mere public service announcement status in the illegal drug media campaign, although alcohol is more dangerous and costly to society than illegal drugs: b Every day, on average, 11,318 American young people (12 to 20 years of age) try alcohol for the first time, 6,488 try marijuana for the first time, 2,786 try cocaine for the first time and 386 try heroin for the first time. b Alcohol is a factor in three leading causes of death for 15 to 24 year olds. Two to three times as many teenagers and young adults die in alcohol-related traffic crashes as do from illegal drugs. b While 2 percent of high school students used heroin last year, 31 percent of 12th graders admitted to having been intoxicated one or more times in the month before the annual University of Michigan "Monitoring the Future" study. Binge drinking (consuming five or more drinks in a row) was reported by 31.3 percent of high school seniors, 25.1 percent of 10th graders, and 14.5 percent of eighth graders. b Illegal drugs kill about 14,000 people a year at an annual cost to taxpayers of about $70 billion. Three-quarters of the expense is related to crime and law enforcement; one-quarter is health-related. 

 Alcohol kills about 100,000 people annually at a cost to taxpayers of about $99 billion a year. Eighty percent of this cost is health-related. Nearly 2,000 Americans were killed by teenage drunken drivers last year. 

 The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is the advertising agency group that originally took Big Tobacco and Big Booze money and failed to produce one ad to discourage children from smoking or drinking. It is McCaffrey's partner in producing free ads scheduled for prime-time television. 

Campaign architects contend they have negotiated with stations to broadcast public service announcements against underage drinking. But bets are off on how many will appear in prime time with the showbiz production quality of the illegal drug ads. 

 If Congress had to fund this experiment, it should have centered on kids' first drug of choice — alcohol — and been based in research. 

Demonizing the illegal drugs and glamorizing the legal drug is wasting taxpayer money. What good do a few public service announcements do when shown against a backdrop of beer ads celebrating the wonders of alcohol? 

In one year, the beer industry spends three times more on TV advertising than McCaffrey has to spend on all media. Social marketing can work, but research shows that a media campaign should tie in with community-based activities. This one doesn't (and the federal government has cut its support of local prevention work). 

At the core of the drug-war campaign are parents talking to kids about drugs. That may feel good, but research doesn't support it as a successful prevention strategy. 

 Last January, McCaffrey kicked off the test phase of the campaign in Denver by saying, "The most dangerous person in the United States is a 12-year-old smoking marijuana." 

It hardly helps to learn from a recent Adweek interview that he is basing this taxpayer gamble on his "gut feeling" that advertising works ­ because it worked for the Army.