ADVERTISING INEPTITUDE
WALTERS, JOHN P. & O'GARA, JAMES F.X.
ADVERTISING INEPTITUDE by John P. Walters and James F. X. O’Gara IN ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING TV ADS in the White House’s new anti-drug campaign, 13-yearold Oakland native Kevin Scott talks about...
...in defense policy, making interdiction a priority...
...Consider: Since 1992, drug use by young people has increased more rapidly than at any time since modern measurement began in the 1970s...
...Presumably after they’ve dodged the drug dealers on the way home...
...James F. X. O’Gara is former drug-policy adviser to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch...
...To see what’s in store if current trends are left unchecked, one need look no farther than Baltimore...
...The wide availability of drugs entails the normalization of drug use...
...Parents and responsible adults need to teach young people that drug use is wrong and harmful and that for this reason those who sell and use drugs will be punished...
...Americans will take care of what happens around the kitchen table if our leaders will only pay more attention to what happens in the streets...
...Never have the forces for the wholesale legalization of drug sales and use been more powerful...
...For all this, the legalization movement has celebrated Schmoke as a national hero...
...Added drug czar Barry McCaffrey, “If you want a war on drugs, you have to sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your children...
...Such campaigns have been effective in the past (when they were funded largely by private contributions)—but only in conjunction with a concerted national effort to target drug use and trafficking on all levels...
...John P. Walters is former deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy...
...Well, Newt Gingrich joined the president at the gala ad-campaign kickoff and proclaimed himself “delighted . . . at what I hope will be a decisive campaign in saving our country and our children from drugs...
...There are some blocks where there are more drug dealers than others...
...Never has the number of emergency-room cases related to drugs been higher—and the data go back more than two decades...
...The Kevins of America might be forgiven for wondering if the adults are really paying attention...
...The dramatic reductions of the Reagan and Bush years have been attacked as unsustainable largely because they were not sustained...
...In truth, there is nothing wrong with an ad campaign designed to change youthful attitudes and engage parents and responsible adults...
...Baltimore has not only gotten its full measure of federal drug-control funds, it has even received special, additional federal money, as well as $25 million for “harm reduction” efforts from the drug-legalizing philanthropist George Soros.o see what’s in store if current trends are left unchecked, one need look no farther than Baltimore...
...The harsh reality is that drug use begins in experimentation, with a substantial portion of users escalating to addiction, which often ends in death...
...Two days later, in his Saturday radio address, President Clinton had more drug news...
...In fairness, one thing the new ads may do is counter some of the drift toward the normalization of drug use (which is why the legalizers have been loudly attacking the campaign...
...John Ashcroft astutely said of the new ad campaign: “I do believe that parents need to talk to children, but let’s do what government is supposed to do and make drug use risky...
...Yet the current trend has been just the reverse—to decriminalize drug use and substitute “harm reduction” for an intolerance of drug trafficking and use...
...And if they say drug use is intolerable but fail to act effectively to stop and punish those who sell and use drugs, their actions convey a much more powerful lesson than their words...
...Accept drug use as normal and unavoidable, Americans have been told...
...A free, democratic society ought to display a special intolerance for those things that undermine the capacity of its citizens to be self-governing...
...Mayor Kurt Schmoke has taken the path of normalization— reducing drug enforcement, distributing clean needles to addicts, and emphasizing treatment and “harm reduction...
...Sen...
...Yet President Clinton’s own drug-policy office recently published a stark description of the appalling conditions in Baltimore: Heroin is readily available, with city dealers moving into suburbs and high schools...
...Mayor Kurt Schmoke has taken the path of normalization— reducing drug enforcement, distributing clean needles to addicts, and emphasizing treatment and “harm reduction...
...And where were the rest of our national leaders...
...Never has the age of first use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or LSD been lower...
...Baltimore has not only gotten its full measure of federal drug-control funds, it has even received special, additional federal money, as well as $25 million for “harm reduction” efforts from the drug-legalizing philanthropist George Soros...
...This time, alas, the ads are being rolled out as a substitute for the national leadership that the president, his drug czar, his Attorney General, and others have failed to supply...
...But again, he made no mention of the ongoing scandal of open-air drug markets...
...Don’t give up...
...All of us have to deal with that,” said the president, “but we know that the more young people fear drugs, the more they disapprove of them, the less likely they are to use them...
...No serious person can believe that even the best ad campaign is an appropriate centerpiece for the effort to reverse current trends...
...Washington had 40 such cases related to heroin per 100,000 population in 1996—Baltimore had 346...
...and in law enforcement, insisting that major trafficking organizations are systematically targeted and dismantled by federal authorities and that open-air drug markets are closed by local authorities...
...The dealers are scared of police, but they aren’t scared of me...
...And they don’t take ‘no’ for an answer...
...Reducing the supply of drugs is critically important because drug use—whether by non-addicts or addicts—is fueled by their very ubiquity...
...Washington, D.C., had 89 emergency- room cases related to cocaine per 100,000 in population in 1996—Baltimore had 362...
...There are some places where kids are subject to more temptation than others...
...Never has an administration established a worse record with regard to the drug problem, and never has one been held less accountable...
...If those in authority do not address the issue seriously, they teach that drug use is not a serious matter...
...Never has the availability of drugs been greater, with record low prices and record high purities...
...For all this, the legalization movement has celebrated Schmoke as a national hero...
...and marijuana, a law-enforcement official reports, “is not being seen as a drug...
...This is the same Republican leader who for more than a year has been promising to transform our national anti-drug effort into a real war, “the way we fought World War II...
...cocaine is plentiful in both crack and powder forms...
...A nation that permits wide availability of dangerous drugs is sending its citizens an unmistakable message: We are largely indifferent to drug use...
...Television ads may be of some help, but what is vital is that national leaders at the same time carry out their responsibilities: in foreign policy, holding source and transit countries accountable for stopping the flow...
...Think about that the next time you see Kevin Scott on television...
...Welcome to the brave new world...
...ADVERTISING INEPTITUDE by John P. Walters and James F. X. O’Gara IN ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING TV ADS in the White House’s new anti-drug campaign, 13-yearold Oakland native Kevin Scott talks about the daily nightmare he faces walking home from school past open-air drug markets...
...The concluding voiceover intones: “To Kevin Scott and all the other kids who take the long way home, we hear you...
...Let’s hope Kevin and “all the other kids” weren’t watching July 9 when President Clinton essentially told them his latest effort, a $1 billion taxpayer-funded advertising campaign, won’t focus on those drug dealers at all...
...No, the message for Kevin and “all the other kids” was that the federal government is going to put a few more million tax dollars into the notoriously under-performing drug-treatment system...
...In fact, since Schmoke took office in 1987, Baltimore has become the most addiction-ridden metropolitan area in the country per capita...
...Here’s the problem: Drug use can be intensely pleasurable, so pleasurable it can lead the user, in all too many cases, to sacrifice everything else for the sake of obtaining and using drugs...
...Treatment that works (including faith-based treatment programs) should be funded...
...The attractiveness of drugs can be countered only by moral precepts that are enforced when they are violated...
Vol. 3 • July 1998 • No. 44
