April 04, 2003

Remember the "if you buy a joint, you've killed a cute Mexican girl with an AK-47" spots that debuted during the Super Bowl? They were roundly criticized, pulled, reworked, re-aired, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy has finally pulled them for good. It's a story of internal politics and fraud -- and you paid for it.

Drugs=Terrorism Spots Killed

Remember those intellectually soft drugs-users-pay-terrorists ad campaign? The Office of National Drug Control Policy killed the spots because they were off-message, untrue, and ineffectual. The Partnership for Drug-Free America didn't like them for being "off-strategy" -- though that maybe more about Ogilvy and Mather doing the creative, which is usually the PDFA's job. Most progressive/decriminalization groups think the campaign was misleading, as terrorists come from dysfunctional foreign policy, and not potsmokers. But they don't like the idea of anti-drug campaigns anyway. The cited reason for killing the spots, though, was that they totally failed, just like all the other ONDCP campaigns.

Recall that in March 2002, O & M had to pay the GAO $1.8 million in fines for billing 3,100 hours of questionable work to the ONDCP in 1999 -- and they still got the contract for the campaign, which started in February 2002. You can read the full GAO report from August 2001.

PS - All of this is paid for by the government, i.e. you.


-- posted by Gunnar at April 4, 2003 12:59 PM - TrackBack
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