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Drug Wars' Super Sunday
(Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet, January 28, 2004)
This year's fictitious Bud Bowl has a different match-up: Instead of a tussle between animated helmet-wearing Budweiser bottles and its arch-rival Bud Light, the company will be taking on a real world rival – a White House that claims drinking leads to drug use. . . . the National Football League's Super Bowl has become Super Sunday for advertising agencies and multinational corporations. Nearly as remarkable as the game itself are the advertisements which keep some viewers from hitting their remotes . . . Leaving no drug-war advertising opportunity behind, John Walters' White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) will be encouraging people to stay away from the "good stuff" during the premiere of its latest advertising campaign which launches on Super Bowl Sunday; a campaign that for the first time "subtly" makes the connection between drinking and drug use. . . . Ironically, the unveiling of the most recent ONDCP's campaign against marijuana comes on the heels of a recently released study concluding that the White House's anti-drug campaigns have had little impact on American teenagers, its primary target, and news that two employees of the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges they were defrauding the government in connection with their work for the White House drug office. . . . The report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recognized that "there is little evidence of direct favorable [advertising] campaign effects on youth." . . . The new ads appear to be folding Bush's drug wars into his faith-based initiative. Last year, at a press conference surrounded by Christian, Jewish and Islamic community leaders, Walters said: "Faith plays an important role when it comes to teen marijuana prevention. We are urging youth ministers, volunteers and faith leaders to integrate drug prevention messages and activities into their sermons and youth programming and are providing them with key tools and resources to make a difference. . . . At the time, Walters was announcing the launch of a new campaign called "Faith. The Anti-Drug," which indicated that the drug czar was turning down the volume from earlier anti-marijuana ad campaigns focusing on teens that linked the use of marijuana to the funding of terrorist organizations and support for terrorism. . . . congressional critics "have questioned both the ads effectiveness and the use of Ogilvy, which [in 2002] ... settled for $1.8 million civil charges that it over-billed the government for its ad work on the anti-drug account," AdAge.com recently reported. . . . In September, the National Academy of Sciences released a study "that called for the inclusion of alcohol in the anti-drug campaign," according to AdWeek.com. "Parents tend to dramatically underestimate underage drinking generally and their own children's drinking in particular," the study said. "The beer and liquor industries have long opposed any inclusion of alcohol messages in the [anti-drug] campaign, on the basis that responsible drinking – unlike drug use – is legal for adults."

posted by LoZo 4:09 PM