A White House Drug Deal Gone

A White House Drug Deal Gone BadSitting on the negative results of a study of anti-marijuana ads.
By Ryan Grim
Posted Thursday, Sept. 7, 2006, at 7:44 AM ET

Since 1998, the federal government has spent more than $1.4 billion on an ad campaign aimed primarily at dissuading teens from using marijuana. You've seen the ads—high on pot, stoners commit a host of horrible acts, including running over a little girl on a bike at a drive-through. Or a kid sits in the hospital with his fist stuck in his mouth.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the arm of the federal government that funds research on drug abuse and addiction, partnered to study the ad campaign's effectiveness. The White House provided the funding and NIDA contracted with a research firm, Westat, which gathered data between November 1999 and June 2004. The report Westat produced cost the government $42.7 million. It shows that the ad campaign isn't working, as the Associated Press reported in late August. Instead of reducing the likelihood that kids would smoke marijuana, the ads increased it. Westat found that "greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others use marijuana." More exposure to the ads led to higher rates of first-time drug use among certain groups, like 14- to 16-year-olds and white kids.

Five years and $43 million to show that a billion-dollar ad campaign doesn't work? That's bad. But perhaps worse, and as yet unreported, NIDA and the White House drug office sat on the Westat report 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.