The federal government’s anti-drug ad campaign is a demonstrated flop. So what’s the government going to do? Run the ads on YouTube, a hugely popular Internet video service that is demonstrably not anti-drug.
Flashback to August: The Government Accountability Office reported that the ad campaign has not been proven to deter children from using drugs and recommended that lawmakers consider reducing funding for the program, which has cost $1.2 billion since 1998. (President Bush has requested another $120 million for next year.)
The GAO’s recommendation was based on an independent evaluation of the campaign conducted by Westat Inc. The report, commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, cost the government $42.7 million. The report found that not only is the campaign not working, it is backfiring.
Westat Inc. found that the scores of television, print and radio ads had no “significant favorable effects” in deterring children from trying marijuana or getting them to stop. Instead, it found that more 121/2- to 13-year-olds and girls were trying the drug after seeing the ads.
In September, the online magazine Slate reported that the agencies that commissioned the report sat on the findings for a year and a half beginning in early 2005 – while spending $220 million on the anti-marijuana ads in fiscal years 2005 and 2006. The GAO confirmed this and added that it encountered serious resistance from the NIDA and the White House when it insisted that it was entitled and mandated by Congress to review the publicly funded Westat report.
The government now says the study was ill-suited to judge the effect of an ad campaign and that the findings have limited relevance because they are more than two years old. Of course, sitting on the findings for a year and a half made them older. Downplaying unfavorable findings is not new. In 1994, the Justice Department rejected a report it had commissioned on the DARE program at schools, because it found that the program had no effect on whether children will try drugs.
Since the government’s anti-marjiuana ads are already made, there’s no additional cost to run them on YouTube. Millions of dollars aside, what about the cost of ignoring the evidence that more kids are trying pot after seeing the ads?
“If just one teen sees this and decides illegal drug use is not the path for them, it will be a success,” a government spokesman said of placing the ads on YouTube.
And if one, or more, decides to try drugs? When will the government just say no?
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