A letter I sent to The Justice, the student run newspaper at Brandeis
University, after they ran a PDFA "public service" ad for free.  Feel
free to modify this to suit the needs of whatever media outlet you are
sending it to.  Please credit me if you use it.  Also, you may want to
track down the references I use and read those - they are interesting.
 -- Ofer Inbar -- cos@cs.brandeis.edu -- FidoNet: Ofer Inbar on 1:101/310

The Partnership for Drug-War Hysteria

	The most recent issue of The Justice ran a full page "public
service" advertisement from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. 
Like most Partnership ads, it was free of any meaningful content,
consisting simply of a vague statement meant to scare people.
	The PDFA routinely employs scare tactics in its campaign to
fight drug abuse.  They are perhaps best known for the famous "fried
egg" commercial, which likened an egg on a skillet to "your brain on
drugs."  After seeing that ad, some teenagers have stopped taking
drugs, and some 4-year olds have stopped eating eggs.[2]  Another
Partnership ad urging children to turn in their marijuana-using
parents had to be pulled because it was too effective - Police around
the country were being called to arrest parents who smoked cigarettes,
or who had merely made their children angry.
	Not all PDFA advertisements rely on vague statements and
insinuations.  Some of them try to bolster the hype by including
"facts."  One particularly shocking TV piece pictured "the brainwaves
of a normal 14 year old," followed by a mostly flat EEG trace that
represented "the brainwaves of a 14 year old on marijuana."  According
to Theresa Grant, public information director for the organization,
"[that] commercial was one of the ads that we used as a fact, rather
than a fear-inducing ad."
	But the medical community protested this "fact".  Marijuana
has never been shown to cause brain damage, and the EEG trace
resembled that of a coma patient.[2,3,5]  Grant later acknowledged,
"They manipulated the machine.  It was not attached to any person.  It
was unscientific."[4]  The ad was pulled, but the PDFA never published
a retraction[3] and still insists it was an accurate "simulation."
	One PDFA ad published by numerous medical journals in 1990
claimed, "last year, 15 million Americans used cocaine -- and 5
million of those who survived required medical help."  But the most
recent survey of cocaine abuse available at that time estimated that
8.2 million Americans used cocaine, and only 0.76% of them suffered
cocaine-related medical emergencies.  Grant could not cite any sources
for the Partnership's claim, and agreed it was "plain wrong." [1]
	Other purported facts the Partnership has publicized are
similarly tainted.  They have claimed that drug abuse costs American
businesses $60 billion a year, that the average drug user first gets
high at an age of 11.6 years old, and that drug users are 5 times more
likely to file a worker's compensation claim than non-users.  None of
these wildly outrageous claims are backed up by any but the flimsiest
of evidence.
	11.6 years old is the age people first smoke a cigarette,
accodring to the survey cited.  The author of the study upon which the
outrageous $60 billion claim is based says the Partnership is
misinterpreting and misusing it.  And the worker's compensation figure
is based on a Firestone Tire Company study which Firestone itself has
no records of.  [5,6]
	Dr. John P. Morgan, a CUNY medical professor, calls this
"chemical McCarthyism."  "One of the reasons young people have no
faith in what we say about drugs," he adds, "is because of lies by
people like the Partnership."[5]
	Most PDFA ads, like the one that ran in The Justice, contain
neither facts nor lies.  Instead, their vague insinuations are meant
to convey the message that drugs are bad.  But which drugs are bad? 
Alcohol is the direct cause of 130,000 deaths in this country
annually, not including traffic fatalities.  Tobacco even worse. 
Cocaine, on the other hand, is responsible for about 3000 to 4000
deaths a year.  Marijuana, a drug which is safer than aspirin and less
addictive than coffee, has not killed anyone in all of recorded
history.  Why does the PDFA produce countless ads targetting cocaine
and marijuana while completely ignoring the dangers of legal drugs?
	Many people incorrectly assume the Partnership is a government
agency.  In fact, it is a private group which tries hard to hide its
sources of funding, to protect them from the legalization lobby. 
Their 1991 tax return reveals a good reason for this.  Over half of
the PDFA's funding comes from those who have the most to lose from
legalization - pharmaceutical companies.[2]
  In addition, the Partnership has strong ties to the tobacco & liquor
industry.  The nation's largest tobacco and alcohol companies, Philip
Morris, Anheuser-Bush, and RJR Reynolds, each has contributed
$150,000.[2]  And the chairman of the Philip Morris tobacco company,
which also owns Miller beer, is on the PDFA's board of directors.
	Is the Partnership really working for a "Drug-Free" America? 
Or are the manufacturers of legal drugs simply banding together to
defend their market through the use of lies, exagerration, and
hysteria-inducing scare tactics?

		Ofer Inbar


References:

[1] "An Antidrug Message Gets Its Facts Wrong",
     Scientific American, May 1990
[2] "Condoning the Legal Stuff?  Hard Sell in the War on Drugs"
     The Nation, March 9, 1992
[3] "PDFA: Slickly Packaged Lies",
     The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer, page 74.
[4] "Untruths, Unreliable Data Create Obstacles in War on Drugs",
     The Hartford Courant (1990?)
[5] St. Petersburg Times, June 29, 1990

Note: "Partnership for a Drug-Free America", with the hyphen and that
capitalization, is the official spelling of their name.  If possible,
please publish the listed references along with my letter.