U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

66–224 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

THE NATIONAL YOUTH ANTI-DRUG MEDIA

CAMPAIGN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 14, 1999

Serial No. 106–137

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman

BOB BARR, Georgia

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

DOUG OSE, California

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

SHARON PINKERTON, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

GILL MACKLIN, Professional Staff Member

STEVE DILLINGHAM, Special Counsel

LISA WANDLER, Clerk

CHERRI BRANSON, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 14, 1999 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Cooper, Tinker, Families Against Drugs, Orlando, FL; Shona Seifert,

Ogilvy & Mather, New York City, NY; and Harry Frazier, senior vice

president, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Washington, DC ................................. 98

Johnston, Lloyd, program director and university distinguished research

scientist, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; and

S. Shyam Sundar, director media effects research laboratory, College

of Communications, Pennsylvania State University .................................. 131

McCaffrey, General Barry R., Director, Office of National Drug Control

Policy .............................................................................................................. 19

Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:

Cooper, Tinker, Families Against Drugs, Orlando, FL, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 101

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 15

Frazier, Harry, senior vice president, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Washington, DC:

Followup questions and responses ........................................................... 122

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 109

Johnston, Lloyd, program director and university distinguished research

scientist, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 134

McCaffrey, General Barry R., Director, Office of National Drug Control

Policy:

Followup questions and responses ........................................................... 79

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 25

Mica, Hon. John L., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Florida, prepared statement of .................................................................... 8

Seifert, Shona, Ogilvy & Mather, New York City, NY, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 105

Sundar, S. Shyam, director media effects research laboratory, College

of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 155

(1)

THE NATIONAL YOUTH ANTI-DRUG MEDIA

CAMPAIGN

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Mica, Cummings, Souder, Turner,

Terney, Barr, Ros-Lehtinen, Portman, Hutchinson, Ose, and

Kucinich.

Staff present: Sharon Pinkerton, staff director and chief counsel;

Steve Dillingham, special counsel; Gill Macklin, Mason Alinger,

and Carson Nightwine, professional staff members; Charley Diaz,

congressional fellow; Lisa Wandler, clerk; Cherri Branson, minority

counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority staff assistant.

Mr. MICA. We don’t have a gavel this morning, and we don’t have

all of our members, but I would like to go ahead and start the

hearing this morning and call this meeting of the Subcommittee on

Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources to order.

I would like to get started. We are expecting our ranking member and will be joined by other Members, but we do have, I believe,

three panels today, and we want to keep the proceedings moving.

I will start with an opening statement, and hopefully we will be

joined in a few minutes, as I said, by our ranking member, and we

can move the hearing along.

Today’s topic is the national youth anti-drug media campaign,

and a review of what has been taking place with that campaign.

Today, our subcommittee is conducting this oversight hearing as

the first in a series of hearings to examine that national youth

anti-media drug campaign.

It is vital that this program be administered both effectively and

efficiently, and also in keeping with the intent of Congress.

I do want to inject at this point a little bit of my concern, and

I will express it to the Director of ONDCP, right at the outset that

we have had some difficulty in obtaining information to conduct

this hearing and to perform our Constitutional duties of oversight

and our particular responsibilities because we have been unable to

obtain some information from ONDCP.

Our staff has compiled a list of documents, including subcontractors’ monthly activity reports, evaluation reports, and project staVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:48 Nov 08, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66224.TXTX HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tus reports which have been requested but not submitted by

ONDCP to date.

Now, we had first requested information, I believe, back in

March. We have delayed conducting this hearing on several occasions. We wanted to give the ONDCP an opportunity to first complete a full year of activity in the program, and, second, to also

compile and provide us with that information.

So today’s hearing will be somewhat preliminary in that we have

not had an opportunity to review all of the documents that we requested, nor have we received those documents.

It is my hope that we can work cooperatively with ONDCP to

both secure those documents, records, and information, and have

them provided to the subcommittee so that we can conduct our

proper oversight role.

In addition to our oversight responsibilities for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, our investigative venue extends to a

host of departments and agencies that partner with ONDCP to

fight illicit drug use.

ONDCP is responsible for the policy guidance that is incorporated into our national drug control strategy and for assisting in

the coordination of Federal, State, and local anti-drug efforts.

Early in this administration, drug issues were largely neglected,

and in an effort to reduce White House staff, the Office of National

Drug Control Policy staff was dramatically slashed, down from

more than 100 staff positions to only a couple of dozen.

Congress has acted to reinvigorate the national anti-drug effort

by putting pressure on the White House to adequately staff the office.

I might say, too, under the leadership of our new drug czar and

Director, General McCaffrey, that we have dramatically brought up

staffing. With a staff today of nearly 150, ONDCP is many times

the size it was after the slash and burn activities back in the early

part of this administration.

Congress continues to increase the Nation’s anti-drug budget,

which now exceeds $17.8 billion. Just since 1996, our anti-drug

budget has grown by $4.3 billion. That is just since 1996, a $4.3

billion increase. Most of this increase, 55 percent, has funded more

prevention and education programs.

ONDCP’s budget for fiscal year 1999 was $350 million, with

about $200 million being spent on the high-intensity drug traffic

areas [HIDTAs], and $185 million, more than 40 percent of the

total budget, on the media ad campaign.

ONDCP’s performance of its responsibility to promote anti-drug

messages nationwide is the focus of today’s hearing. ONDCP refers

to the effort and they have given it the title, ‘‘The National Youth

Anti-Drug Media Campaign,’’ or some refer to it as ‘‘the campaign.‘‘

The campaign is no small program. At nearly $1 billion over 5

years, this is one of the largest advertising campaigns ever

launched. One advertising executive recently noted that there are

only a handful of ad campaigns in excess of $1 million a year, and

cited New York, where $30 to $40-million accounts are fought for,

as he said, tooth and nail.

In fiscal year 1998, Congress appropriated $195 million to

ONDCP. I might add that that was $20 million over the President’s

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request. That $195 million was to support this national anti-drug

media campaign. In fiscal year 1999, $185 million was appropriated, and another $185 million will be provided for in fiscal year 2000.

The predecessor to the campaign was developed and run from

1987 to 1997 free of charge to the taxpayers by the Partnership for

Drug-Free America.

As we are here today, experience has shown that when a strong

anti-drug message is commercially nationally communicated and

media time is maximized, drug abuse begins to drop.

Before 1998, the partnership, the private partnership, donated

air time from the big three television networks to disseminate antidrug messages nationwide. Creative talent was donated to develop

and produce anti-drug ads. In 1991, the estimated value of these

donations exceeded $350 million annually.

Increased competition from the industry deregulation in 1991 resulted in the beginning of a decline in donated media time. As a

result, the partnership and others worked to convince Congress to

appropriate Federal dollars to continue media buys so that the

anti-drug message might continue.

During this time, I proposed to ONDCP and the FCC, Federal

Communications Commission, that the public had a right, as owners of the public airwaves, to require a minimum level of public

service announcements on this issue. However, a compromise was

reached that Congress would fund media buys that would be

matched by donated broadcast time and space.

I should note that in the early 1980’s First Lady Nancy Reagan

contributed immensely to an anti-drug awareness campaign

through her ‘‘just say no’’ campaign efforts. That simple yet powerful message reached the entire Nation without cost to the taxpayers.

In the absence of such a clear message today and recognizing the

need for a strong anti-drug message, Congress agreed to commit

substantial tax dollars to replace previously donated media time.

Again, this decision was made as a result of a proven media

track record and congressional appreciation for the urgency to respond to a growing drug crisis.

As shown in the 1999 national drug control strategy on page 12,

based on a national household survey data from 1985 to 1992, use

of illicit drugs declined in that period by 50 percent, from about 12

percent to about 6 percent of households. However, since this administration took office in 1992, the declining trend in illicit drug

use reversed direction.

Throughout the 1990’s, reports of the National Institute of Drug

Abuse [NIDA], indicate that, overall, illicit drug use rose at an

alarming rate among our young people during the beginning of this

administration. Now skyrocketing heroin use and addiction are

threatening our young people more than ever before.

From 1993 to 1997, the number of Americans reporting heroin

use in the past month rose from 68,000 to 325,000. That is more

than a quadrupling.

In 1998, over half of our Nation’s 12th graders reported trying

an illicit drug, according to the University of Michigan’s report,

which is entitled, ‘‘Monitoring the Future: A Study.’’ This has taken

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place and, in fact, has occurred since this administration took office

in 1992. The fact is that lifetime marijuana use has nearly doubled

among 8th and 12th graders, and gone up over 50 percent among

12th graders.

Since this administration took office, lifetime crack cocaine use

has more than doubled among 8th and 10th graders and has gone

up nearly 70 percent among 12th graders.

Since this administration took office, lifetime use of cocaine has

more than doubled among 10th graders, and gone up nearly 60 percent among 8th graders, and over 50 percent among 12th graders.

The need for action is abundantly clear.

In appropriating moneys for the media campaign, conditions

were placed on funding uses. The Office of Drug Control Policy was

instructed not to supplant community-based coalitions or pro bono

public service time and not to use funds for politically partisan purposes or to feature elected or administration officials.

ONDCP was asked to plan for securing private contributions and

having qualifications of fund recipients, and also to have a system

to measure outcomes.

As a consequence of funding this media effort, this subcommittee

is responsible for ensuring that the campaign is both effective and

efficient and that taxpayer dollars are maximized and not wasted.

We cannot afford wasteful or inefficient government practices in

saving our youth from drugs.

Today, as this subcommittee learns more about ONDCP’s administration of the media campaign, we must examine both the

progress that is being made and the areas where improvements are

needed in this program.

Based upon available information, there are some signs of some

significant progress, and there are also some signs that raise

doubts as to the media campaigns effectiveness and also its efficiency.

Again, I have requested important contract information from

ONDCP that our investigative staff has not yet received. This is

not a national security issue and neither is the information that

they have something that deals with our national security. I will

withhold final judgment regarding this initiative for now. Still,

based upon information that I have, I have numerous concerns regarding the campaign’s effectiveness and efficiency, and I think

some of the information we have already received also makes me

question some of the expenditures. But, again, I am going to withhold judgment until we get all the facts and information and document in hand.

I do consider it a positive sign that ONDCP budget figures indicate that significant media buys have been made, and that we have

had very significant donated match services received. Still, I am

concerned about paying for production costs that were donated in

the past. I don’t have a complete accounting of all these expenditures at this point, but I have a number of other concerns.

One expectation that I had about this initiative—an expectation

that I believe was shared by others in Congress—was that the

funds were to go to media buys. That was the need articulated to

me and to other Members of Congress. Therefore, I envisioned a

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media effort, simple in design and easy to administer. After all,

ONDCP is a policy office and part of the White House.

Congress—wisely, I think—generally does not have the White

House administer government programs. The departments and

agencies generally administer sizable programs, as they have inspector generals, established procedures and safeguards, and more

experience and resources.

Accordingly, I envisioned, perhaps, a single competitive contract

award for buying media time with donated matches, and a concise

plan for possible private contributions. After all, a proven and tested media approach was in place, based on studies and experience.

Instead, what we have seen so far is a very tangled web of contracts that appears overly complicated, expensive, somewhat bureaucratic, and, unfortunately, untested. And I might add, it is

very difficult for our investigative subcommittee staff at this point

to sort through these expenditures and, again, this tangle of contracts.

The media campaign has now been divided into dozens of contracts, subcontracts, interagency agreements, and transfers for a

wide assortment of purposes. Why was a media buy converted into

a very complicated and expensive programmatic activity? Was this

approach necessary and the most effective and cost-efficient course

to take? I am not quite certain.

I question the need for a $10 million reimbursable work agreement with a contractor to provide contract and administrative support services. Why is this needed?

Why was $750,000 sent to the Substance Abuse and Mental

Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], to develop innovative

and effective approaches to the prevention of substance abuse?

Doesn’t SAMHSA already do this? If not, why not?

ONDCP is responsible for guiding and leveraging these agencies

to contribute to anti-drug efforts. I know that the National Institute for Drug Abuse [NIDA] sends instructional packages to every

middle school in the Nation. I have one with me today, and I assure you that I have plans for learning more about what SAMHSA

is or is not doing.

I suggest guidance and coordination with our Education Department, which has a half-billion-dollar-per-year safe and drug-free

school program.

Are we duplicating that effort? It, too, is designed to fight drugs

in schools. Our oversight of that program reveals a strong need for

quality guidance.

In particular, I question the award of almost $10 million per year

over a 5-year period totaling more than $48 million to a public relations firm, apparently with little Federal contract experience, as

part of a non-advertising campaign.

Wasn’t the whole purpose of this campaign to advertise more extensively?

I realize that ONDCP sought and received the advice of others

in planning these activities on how funds might be divvied up.

Still, Congress is responsible to all the taxpayers and citizens for

ensuring that these funds have been used effectively and efficiently

and in accordance with congressional intent.

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Congress is also responsible for ensuring that all agencies contribute their fair share and do not skim moneys from this media

effort. It appears to me that many of the non-advertising campaign

activity should be conducted by other well-funded Federal agencies.

I also am concerned about recent contract reimbursement issues

resulting from non-reimbursements and about delays in

deliverables such as non-advertising campaign evaluation due last

month. It is my understanding that one of these evaluations was

due September 4th. We were given conflicting information as to

whether ONDCP had that report, and we certainly have not been

able to get a copy of that report. That is troubling to me.

A more complete discussion of the funding and contract concerns

may have to wait until later hearings, again because we don’t have

the information from ONDCP or access to records.

I will be requesting additional information from ONDCP, but

available information raises some very serious questions. Was it necessary to spend $1 million for a 50-page communications plan? Are the expensive evaluations truly needed, including

a $4.5 million evaluation of cities, that reaffirm the obvious—that

the anti-drug message can increase awareness and perception of

risk? That was a $4.5 million expenditure. What do we expect from

the projected 5-year, $35 million national evaluation?

I agree that we need to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts.

That is very important. However, we already have federally sponsored research of the monitoring of the future project. That project

has been monitoring attitudes and drug abuse trends for decades.

In fact, its surveys are being used in this effort.

Again, I support reasonable evaluation research and can understand dedicating funds for this purpose and that they are, in fact,

needed.

In fiscal year 1999, for example, $100,000 of the ONDCP was

earmarked for evaluating the Drug Free Communities Act. It appears to me that spending and media evaluations may be running

amuck.

If you wave large amounts of money in front of contractors and

consultants and researchers, I can assure you that they will come

and they will be attracted to these opportunities.

Finally, I am skeptical of the effective and efficiency of Internet

celebrity chats. My staff has identified public figures and celebrities who are willing to share their anti-drug messages to much

larger audiences without cost to taxpayers.

I would encourage ONDCP to identify celebrities who will volunteer anti-drug messages through donated media productions.

There are also questions raised about the credibility of celebrities

who are being paid for these messages, particularly in this setting.

In sum, I support ONDCP’s media buys and donated time and

talents, efforts to date. We have seen positive impacts of effective

media messages and donated time and talents in the past.

Past successes clearly motivated Congress to fund this media buy

initiative, but I am very concerned about the questionable expenses

and uses of tax dollars that could be spent directly for media buys

and their value more than doubled by donated matches.

I do not consider it appropriate for ONDCP to become a program

office. That is why the ‘‘P’’ in ONDCP stands for ‘‘policy,’’ not for

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‘‘programs.’’ ONDCP, as a component of the White House, is not

well-situated, suited, or equipped to manage complicated programmatic activities.

Most Federal programmatic activities require a multitude of administrative duties and bureaucratic tasks, including developing

programs and projects, devising and implementing plans, monitoring deliverables, conducting cost-effective evaluations, and ensuring

fiscal accountability and integrity.

In my opinion, Congress never intended for ONDCP to undertake

major program activities or to fund a multitude of contracts, subcontracts, and agreements. If the media campaign truly requires a

complicated approach and a multitude of contracts and financial

agreements for non-media buys—something I am not aware of or

convinced of—then Congress could specify such an approach and assign it to an agency with media experience. After all, nearly $17

billion in anti-drug activities are now managed outside of ONDCP.

As I see it, Congress does not intend to create a bureaucratic

monster to fund a study, and also plan and contract, coordinate,

evaluate, and chat the anti-drug message to death.

I feel that a truly integrated campaign should emphasize

partnering rather than paying other Federal agencies, nonprofits,

corporate sponsors, and interested public figures and celebrities.

Congress and ONDCP need to work together on many fronts involving supply and demand. We agree that much more coordination

and resources are needed to respond to the Colombian situation

and to our southwest border crisis. I am convinced that many of

these issues could have been avoided had there been closer coordination by ONDCP with Congress and this subcommittee, both with

the majority and the minority.

I look forward to closer communications and coordinations in the

future.

I hope we find common ground today in recognizing that the protection of our Nation’s youth from drugs is our paramount concern,

and that decisive and effective action is needed.

I am interested in hearing from our witnesses. I apologize for the

length of this opening statement, but we have spent a considerable

amount of time. This is the largest program that we have ever undertaken. It was undertaken, I think, with good will on both sides,

and we want it effective.

We are spending more money, as I said in my opening statement,

than we probably ever had on any media campaign in the history

of the Congress, and we want to look on it with pride and also with

success in that it is effective in addressing this terrible problem

that we face.

With that long opening statement, I am pleased now to hear

from Mr. Cummings.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John L. Mica follows:]

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Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank you very much for holding this hearing.

As I sat there and I listened to you, I was saying to myself at

one time, 31⁄2 or so years ago I sat here as a new member of this

committee and I didn’t have an institutional history, but thank God

this morning I do, and I remember some of the things that have

happened.

As I listened to you—I will be very frank—I got kind of concerned because a lot of the things that you just criticized the agency for are the very things that this Congress told them to do. And

that I find very interesting.

Like, for example, there was some talk about the anti-drug

media campaign that was, prior to this, operated effectively using

donated television time. But back in 1994, a 1994 hearing, the majority decried this dependency on donated time, and in 1998 the

majority pressed for the creation of a paid media campaign.

Then, another thing that concerns me is this whole issue of evaluation. And General McCaffrey knows that he and I don’t agree on

everything, but I do believe in fairness. I am sure he will address

these issues.

Back in October 1998 the Congress directed. We told them to do

it. It wasn’t like something that just fell out of the air. We said,

‘‘Do it.’’ We directed ONDCP to implement a comprehensive communications strategy. Congress instructed ONDCP to purchase

media time and space. But listen to what else we told them to do.

He didn’t do this, we told them to do it: to test and evaluate advertising; test and evaluate the entire campaign; forge partnerships

with community, civic, professional, and government organizations;

form collaborations with the entertainment industry. We didn’t tell

them who to go to in the industry; we told them to do it. Engage

in interactive media activities—we told them to do it.

And now, a few years later, we turn around and we say, ‘‘We

don’t like the way you did it. You spent too much money here.’’

I don’t know whether it is a question of micro-managing or not.

I think that General McCaffrey will address these issues very effectively.

But I must tell you, Mr. Chairman—and I do appreciate and I

know that your heart is in the right place, but one of the things

that concerned me about the entire statement that you just made—

and I think that you and many others have been very concerned

about whether the rates of drug use have gone up or down, but it

is interesting to note that not one syllable was mentioned about the

fact that teenage drug use in the African American community is

going up, not one syllable of that long statement.

General McCaffrey knows that this is a great concern of mine,

and he has agreed to come to my District to sit down with some

young African American children to address this issue so that they

can let him know why, perhaps, this media campaign has not affected them the way it has affected others.

And the other thing that I was very impressed with—and, you

know, I know we sort of glance over sometimes the achievements

of folks when we are trying to make sure we make our point. But

the fact is that General McCaffrey has done a good job. I mean,

there is a 13 percent drop in the number of teens using drugs.

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And, as much as I want to give credit to the ‘‘just say no’’ campaign—and I will tell you, I don’t know how effective it was. I am

going to be frank. I just don’t know, somebody just saying no. But

I applaud every single person who stands up and tries to do something about drug use. But I don’t know. I don’t have a barometer

that says, ‘‘Just say no says something to the children that I represent.’’ I don’t know whether it affected them or not.

But one thing I do know is that when you give children a good

education and when you do the preventive things that the general

is trying to do, I think you stand a better chance of reducing drug

use and preventing drug use.

And so I am excited about this hearing. I am looking forward to

hearing the response.

I think we have to be very careful. I have seen us spend, as a

new Member of this Congress, billions of dollars, and it doesn’t

seem like there is very much oversight at all in some areas.

On the other hand, we have an area where there seems to be— and, general, you can address this—there seems to have been some

effectiveness with the spending of these dollars, but we sit here

and say, ‘‘Well, maybe you aren’t doing it right. Maybe you ought

to tweak it here, tweak it there, tweak it everywhere.’’ But the fact

is that there has been progress.

Last, but not least, as a member of this committee I have, over

and over again, said this, and I mean it. While I may disagree with

the general and his staff on some issues, there are very few human

beings that I have more respect for than this agency. I think they

have one of the toughest jobs in America. And it is so easy to sit

up here and say things should be different, but when you are in

the streets, when you are so often sadly dealing with parents,

sometimes, who don’t take the responsibility that they should take,

when you are dealing with substances which are often almost

dropped in communities, and the things that I see, where wholesale

sale of drugs, where drugs are marketed as if you are marketing

some great product for headaches or something, it is a tremendous

thing that we have to address.

I mean, when we think about all the drugs that folks are trying

to float into this country, fly into it, send by train and cars, it is

a tremendous responsibility.

And I just wanted to take a moment, General, to thank you for

what you do. I could probably say this at the end of the hearing,

but I thank you for what you are doing. It is a very, very difficult

job, and I applaud you and I applaud your staff.

I do have my concerns. I want to thank you for agreeing to try

to address them as best you can. And I look forward to your testimony and the testimony of the other witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Mr. MICA. I thank the ranking member, or acting ranking member today, and recognize the vice chairman of our subcommittee,

Mr. Barr, the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your calling

this hearing. It is always an honor to have General McCaffrey with

us, and I look forward to hearing from him and the other panelists

that you have in the other two panels.

We, of course, share much in common, those of us up here, with

you, General McCaffrey—certainly a commitment to our young people, our abhorrence of mind-altering drugs, and our commitment to

continue to wage an unrelenting battle against their usage.

We also share a common understanding that both of us are stewards of the public’s money, and, while some on the other side may

not view exercising that stewardship in oversight is important, I

know that you know that it is and the chairman and we do, also,

so I appreciate your being up here to discuss with us some of the

specifics about how the moneys are being spent, and I have no prejudgments at all on it. I think it is an important part of our oversight to periodically look and hear from you as one of the prime administrators of these anti-drug moneys to see that they are being

spent most wisely.

There are a lot of questions that we have, and you are always

very forthcoming, except when it relates to some political issues

that are difficult for you to deal with, and I understand that, and

I will get into another one of those, which is the D.C. legalization

initiative again today, and hopefully you will be able to share with

us some thoughts on that, since we have progressed down that road

a little bit since you appeared last here before the Congress.

But I do appreciate our different witnesses today and think that

this is a very important hearing, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your

convening this.

Thank you.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman and recognize now the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, General McCaffrey. We appreciate all of your good

work and efforts over the years to combat drug abuse.

I come here today, Mr. Chairman, with no preconceived notions

about our efforts. I am very supportive of the fact that we at the

Federal level are committing significant dollars in trying to combat

drug abuse and to the advertising effort that is being made.

Those of us who hold political office all have different opinions

about the effectiveness of advertising because we have to engage in

purchasing advertising every 2 years, and we all struggle to be

sure the advertising is out there where people can see it and that

we don’t spend an inordinate amount of our funds on consultants

and other expenses that never actually get out there where the

rubber meets the road, so it is an interesting subject for us to undertake.

I am certainly supportive of the continued efforts to try to involve the private sector and to secure private donated funds and

donated media. It is a very important part of the effort, and I want

to be sure that we are continuing to encourage it.

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But, in the final analysis, I think the commitment that we are

making, both publicly and privately, to communicating an antidrug message to young people is a very important effort and should

be continued, should be subject to review and oversight by this

committee, and I commend you, Mr. Chairman, for holding the

hearing for this purpose.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman and now recognize the

gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I congratulate you for holding this hearing, because I think all of us in

Congress, and especially this committee and this subcommittee,

have an important oversight task, and that is to carefully look at

and monitor how our scarce taxpayer dollars are being spent, and

I think this hearing today should help us to do that, but I am going

to say some positive statements about this media campaign. I know

a little bit about it because this national campaign kicked off in my

Congressional District. I am not going to speak about what they

did in other areas, but I would like to just briefly talk about the

great efforts that this campaign did in my area, where we have an

overwhelming number of Hispanic children in our public and private school systems.

This campaign reached out to the Hispanic community, especially. They got very good support from our Spanish-language

press. They were all out there saying what a positive message it

is to have kids talking to other kids about why it is wrong to take

drugs.

Not only is that an encouraging message to me, as a Member of

Congress, but as a mother of a 13-year-old and a 12-year-old, I

know how pervasive this message of, ‘‘It is OK to take drugs’’ is to

young people. They see it all the time in television, in MTV, on the

Internet, and they actually pay money to hear the message that

drugs are OK, because if you pay attention to the kind of movies

that are out there—and I do—when was the last time that you had

the hero or the heroine of that movie be someone who is doing well

in school, that academic achievements are applauded and that

drugs are terrible?

All around our children today is this culture in which drugs are

OK. What a shame that we actually have to pay to get a message

out there saying that drugs are not OK.

I think that we, of course, must be careful with our tax dollars.

Is this campaign the best use of our tax dollars? Is the message

getting through? Are we doing enough? Are we reaching out to the

partnership groups that are already out there? Is the drug czar

doing enough to work with those anti-drug groups and get the free

media exposure? Is Madison Avenue doing its part to get those ads

out for free?

We want to make sure that we exploit whatever free media is out

there, but, barring that, I think we need to reach out to the young

people, we need to get the message that drugs are not OK.

I know from the kind of campaign that was done in Miami that

it is a message that needs to be heard. I want my children to hear

it. Too bad we have to pay to get them to hear it, but if that is

the way it has got to be done, then that is what we must do. But

let us monitor, let us make sure that it is being correctly used.

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I know General McCaffrey is a semi-resident of south Florida, he

goes down there so much. But I think every time someone goes out

and says drugs are not OK, that is a positive message. I want

Amanda and Patricia to hear that. If it is in Spanish, all the better.

They have got to practice their Spanish.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady and recognize the gentleman

from California, Mr. Ose, for an opening statement.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As always, I welcome the opportunity to participate in your hearings. I regret our good friend, Mr. Cummings, had to depart. I, too,

share a specific interest in how minority groups are being affected,

and I find it ironic, his testimony that use among minorities is

growing, and his objection to our oversight over the matter which

we are participating in an oversight hearing.

I look forward to the General’s feedback, because I do think that

if use is growing in a particular sector, such as some of our minority groups, we do need to exercise oversight.

With that, as always, I learn something every time I have the

opportunity to visit with the general. I thank you for including me.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Ose.

I am pleased now to recognize—he is not a member of our panel,

but he is one of the three co-chairs appointed by the Speaker as

the chair of our anti-drug effort in the House of Representatives,

Mr. Portman.

Mr. Portman of Ohio has really been the leader in working on

the demand side of the equation, and a close ally to this subcommittee and its efforts.

You are recognized, sir, if you want to make an opening statement.

Mr. PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief.

First, I would thank you very much for allowing me to be here

today, not being a member of the panel, and, second, to commend

you for holding this oversight hearing. I think it is extremely important that we have these hearings so that we can have the information out in the public and we can talk honestly about some of

the issues that sometimes only get addressed behind closed doors.

I am very supportive of the campaign. I think Congress took a

huge risk in 1996 by entering into this, which was unprecedented,

setting up what is going to be, over time, the single largest campaign of any kind, largest media campaign not just in the country

but in the world. We did it because we believe that the research

indicated it was the right thing to do.

I believe that the campaign has made considerable progress. I

know we will hear from Lloyd Johnston and others on that later,

as well as General McCaffrey. However, I do think that oversight

of a program of this magnitude is extremely important.

I see three challenges, Mr. Chairman, among the many before us

that I would like to mention, if I could.

First is being sure that we continue to integrate the effort of the

anti-drug media campaign with what is going on in our communities around the country, particularly the community coalition

movement, which is now about 4,000 community coalitions strong,

and we hope to double in the next 4 or 5 years.

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I think we have made some progress in that regard, but I think

we have considerable more progress to make.

Second would be working to mobilize and complement the work

of the private sector. I have spoken with General McCaffrey about

this. I know he is committed to this. But it is to keep the Partnership for Drug-Free America, keep all the other private sector entities that are working on this so diligently and have been over the

last decade with this program, and use them, frankly, to maximize

the impact of this program, use the creative talent on Madison Avenue, use the folks who have, again, spent years working on this,

and to be sure that we are continuing to complement their work

with the work that the Federal Government is supporting through

this program.

The final one is evaluation, and this is one area where I want

to particularly compliment ONDCP for taking this evaluation—

what Mr. Cummings’ earlier mentioned—mandated from Congress,

which I think would have been probably been something the general would have done anyway, but taking it seriously.

I know Lloyd Johnston is going to address that in his statement.

I also know we have a GAO report, Mr. Chairman, I think, that

you have been involved with coming out in March 2000, which I

am anticipating eagerly.

But it is absolutely essential in the prevention area that we do

a better job of evaluating the progress of taxpayer dollars being

spent, particularly when it is of this magnitude.

So again, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for giving me the

opportunity to be here today. I look forward to the testimony.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman, and I would now like to turn

to our first panel, and that consists of the Director of the Office of

National Drug Control Policy.

Director McCaffrey has been with us before. If you would stand,

sir, this is an investigations and oversight committee of Congress.

Raise your right hand to be sworn.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. MICA. Welcome again to our panel, Director McCaffrey. We

are anxious to hear about the progress that has been made on this

anti-drug media campaign. I think we have had about 1 year now

under our belts. We have tried to allow as much time as possible

for the program to run its initial course, and now have an update

provided by you about its progress.

So you are welcome and recognized, sir.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL BARRY R. MCCAFFREY, DIRECTOR,

OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY

General MCCAFFREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the chance

to appear before you and to present some of our own insights, respond to your own questions.

Let me, if I may, with your permission, ask to enter into the

record the written statement we have pulled together, as well as

the copies of the charts that I am going to run through very quickly.

Mr. MICA. Without objection, that documentation and those reports will be made part of the record.

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General MCCAFFREY. We have tried to pull together, and particularly in our written statement, some very detailed data that tries

to get at the questions on what are we doing and how effectively

is it working.

I say that, and excuse the props, but here are the initial evaluations of phase one and phase two, so I think we have gotten a very

detailed and serious scientifically based evaluation of how we are

conducting this campaign and to what effect.

Let me also, if I may, take note that this has been a team effort,

and it is a team effort because here in the room you have wisely

elected to have several of them testify. We have the Partnership for

Drug-Free America. Dick Bonnett is down here with some of his

people. We just had a very effective multi-hour session with Jim

Burke and the others, one of our periodic updates. They are the

right arm we have in this whole outfit.

The Ad Council is here, Jody Berkowitz, campaign manager.

Peggy Collins, their new president, she came in with about 30 of

their people and gave us a spectacular layout on their work, which

I will talk about more later. But let me, if I may, underscore: the

most important thing they are going to do is connect community

coalitions and volunteers to the anti-drug effort. Wait until you see

the work that they are about to start putting on the air. I thank

them for their creativity.

The American Advertising Federation—Wally Snyder is the

president and is here—do the heavy lifting in 102 local media markets. We couldn’t get off the ground without their leadership on

convening and facilitating the media match task forces.

As you know, by law Congress has required me to get at least

100 percent match, and that is where mechanically the leadership

goes on in communities all across America.

You have elected to have testify one of the most brilliant people

I have met in the last 4 years, Shona Seifert, who is the senior

partner and project director of Ogilvy & Mather, our prime advertising contractor. I won’t speak for her, but let me just say that her

team has sparks jumping off them. We are very pleased with their

efforts.

Fleishman-Hillard, although it only has about 5 percent of our

money, will be represented by Harry Frazier, who I know will testify, and Bev Schwartz, who is our vice president and project director. Their rather modest funds arguably at the end of the day may

turn out to be the biggest lever we apply on this whole effort, particularly when it comes to the Internet.

I am not sure any of us yet appreciate the extent to which the

adolescents in our country have moved away from television, radio,

and other forms of communication and are in the Internet right

now. Fleishman-Hillard has done truly brilliant work there.

Lloyd Johnston is here. He has been a source of wisdom on the

drug issue since I picked up these responsibilities. University of

Michigan Survey Research Center—there is no substitute for beginning with some facts, and Lloyd Johnston’s analysis of his own

data base has been instrumental.

A bunch of other folks are here, but let me, if I may, underscore

Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. Sue Thou is here,

their public policy coordinator. They are instrumental. We don’t

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have a national drug problem; we have a series of community drug

epidemics. That is where we are going to get at it.

There are also many other people here. I would just briefly mention that Dr. Linda Wolf Jones, Therapeutic Communities of America, reminds us that, although we are talking prevention and education, which ought to be about 85 percent of our efforts, we still

have to be concerned with the 4 million of us who are chronically

addicted to illegal drugs, and the work of her association and others has been instrumental in getting at that problem.

I am going to run through very quickly, just to show you sort of

the architecture or the structure of this effort through a series of

slides. You have copies, and I would like to end with a 2-minute

video.

The first viewgraph—the strategy. I have to remind all of us that

what we are doing is not random motion, it is part of the national

drug strategy. This is an inter-agency process. There are 14 Cabinet officers involved in it, and I consult with Congress each year

to make sure you have an influence over this document. It is complemented by a communications strategy. This is a $2

billion, 5-year effort involving all means of communication. We are

going to talk about some of these concepts around advertising, a

360-degree approach. It won’t work if there isn’t a blueprint on how

we are going to address these challenges.

We are talking about the most important thing we are doing,

which is goal No. 1. How do we shape youth attitudes to reduce the

abuse of these illegal drugs?

This is borrowing from Dr. Lloyd Johnston. We have good data.

Over time, youth attitudes shape how young people behave, and we

are confident that, when you shape attitudes that essentially reject

the abuse of illegal drugs from about age 9 through 18, drug abuse

goes down. And when that happens, years out, a decade out, chronic addiction goes down, its enormous cost.

That chart is good news, as Congressman Cummings noted— Donna Shalala and I were really very proud to note a 13 percent

reduction in youth drug abuse last year.

I say that. That was not a creature of the media campaign. That

was only—about half of it was influenced by phase two media. So

this is old work, old data, but drug abuse is going down, and I

would argue much of it, Congressman Portman, is due to the work

of the 40 great civic, patriotic organizations, and the more than 33

other NGO’s who are associated in communities across America

with addressing this problem. But it is moving in the right direction, thank God.

Basically, we are just going to take and show you a series of bar

charts. This isn’t the light at the end of the tunnel. What this indicates is the slope of the curve has changed. It was getting worse

from 1990 on, youth attitudes followed by youth behavior. Attitudes

are getting better and behavior is starting to change. But we clearly still have unacceptably high rates of drug abuse.

Here is what you told me to do. And I appreciate Congressman

Cummings reminding us that we have to take into account, there

are 154 people in ONDCP. You have given me program management of a half billion dollars a year of programs. It is not the case

that I am just acting as a policy spokesman for the administration.

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I am now organizing and running the high-intensity drug trafficking program, the media campaign, the Safe and Drug-Free Communities Act, as well as other very useful tools.

I do this, obviously, not by running it myself, but by using contractors and by organizing other agencies of government. But clearly you have made me accountable for a half billion dollars in program activity, a responsibility I take quite seriously.

Here is the guidance you gave me on this one—next chart.

This is not a simple activity. It is coherent, it can be understood,

but it requires a lot of study, and you have to listen to people who

know what they are talking about. Fortunately, on these issues, arguably, one of the most creative industries in America are those associated with advertising and communications. Thankfully, we

have had benefit of some very serious people who have spent their

lives in this field.

I do need to underscore right off the bat that this is a good news

story, and I will just tell you quite bluntly, we know what we are

doing and we are proud to explain how it is going and how we are

organized. But it isn’t just a buying a Seinfeld 30-second spot. It

is more than that. And if you want to talk to children and their

adult mentors in today’s America, you can’t go to the Super Bowl

and buy million-dollar ads. You have got to understand more about

the issue. You have got to see the change in the communications

industry, and you do have to be sophisticated in your thinking.

That is exactly where we are. We intend to document how we are

doing this and to what impact.

Let me just throw that up as a snapshot. That is astonishing. We

went out and we tested it in 12 cities, and we got some pretty good

snapshots—and that is all they were—12 control cities, 12 test cities. The message got heard. We were astonished when we found

out it actually started to change thinking.

Phase two, we went out and took a snapshot. Mind you, our goal

was 90 percent market penetration and four times a week contact.

Those are the results we got in phase two, and that was using

PDFA’s old material.

Now we are into phase three. September 6 we started with the

print media, September 20th with television. It is incredible what

we have now got on the air.

If you are an old guy, you are not seeing a lot of it. If you are

a 14-year-old black kid, last week we probably got to you as much

as 12 times a week with a market message. This is brand new.

We put $33 million in the minority outreach. We are in 11 languages. We have a different strategy in 102 different media markets. This effort does not look the same in Orlando, FL, as it does

in Hawaii and Newark and Cleveland, OH. But that is a snapshot.

In phase three, the fully integrated campaign is now up and running, and that is the one to watch.

We argued at the beginning that it is a 2-year impact, the elasticity between action and shaping attitudes. But I would expect you

should see this thing accelerate over time.

We have got to take into account America’s diversity. We are different people. If you want to talk to a Hispanic kid in the L.A.

basin, if you want to talk to somebody in North Dakota, you have

got to go where they are. You have to take into account that the

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drug threat they see is quite different. If it is Boise, ID, it is white

kids and it is methamphetamines. We have to understand the nature of the drug threat, the nature of the ethnic group we are talking to, and that is why we are in Tagalog. That is why we are

using ads in Cantonese, in Vietnamese. That is why we are out in

the Pacific islands with a very different message than one we crafted for the midwest.

We have got to learn while we are doing this. There is no blueprint for what we are up to. But, fortunately, we have people like

Dr. Alan Leshner, NIDA, and his colleagues. We have the behavioral science expert panel. We have paid a decent amount of attention to chronicling how these things are working. We are focus

group testing these ads, and then we are watching the feedback,

and if they are not working we are going to eliminate them, and

where they are working we are going to try to enhance them. We

are going to produce 130 new ads in the next 2 years.

By the way, we are doing that pro bono. The advertising companies of America, more than 200 of them, are doing this for free. We

are covering the actual production cost, only. The actors you say

that you talk about, the celebrity outreach, they are not getting

paid for their work. The Actors Guild of America has waived their

fees. They are not getting paid for this work. We are enormously

proud of their response in the Entertainment Industry Council, as

example.

Public/private partnership—huge, important contribution. I won’t

go through it verbally, but I would be glad to provide for the record

the enormous generosity of Disney, ABC, America Online, computer corporations, never mind the actual broadcast media, because

public/private partnership—we are not running things at 2 a.m.

now. These are prime time pro bono matching component. We are

up to 109 percent matching. It is $175 million to which we have

gotten access, and we are very grateful for what they are doing. We

have also got more than $40 million in other kinds of pro bono response.

Now, let me, if I may, rap up with four 30-second spots that I

think you will enjoy and learn from.

I must admit, Mr. Chairman, if you would permit me, it is enormously important to me, personally, that I be viewed as responsive

to Congress, in general, and to this committee.

By law, I am a nonpartisan officer of government. I take that responsibility very seriously. This is the sixth time I have appeared

in front of this committee this year. This is the fourth time since

June.

I have provided your staff with more than 12,000 documents. It

cost me over $10,000 to do this. We have brought my agency to a

halt for the better part of 2 weeks. I take offense at the notion that

the somewhat ham-fisted raids on ONDCP over the last 2 weeks

were nonresponsive to your concerns. I will comply with the law.

That means I have to roll personally and be held accountable on

Privacy Act and proprietary information, and I will not violate that

responsibility.

So I will make myself available personally to you. That may have

been part of the problem, that I didn’t pick up the phone and call

you to find out what it is you want and help shape your staff’s

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thinking so they can come over there and not have what I would

call unprecedented oversight and interference, particularly in the

activities of these contractors.

I do not want payroll information or names released from this

committee or from my office. I have told my own people they will

not send anything out of the building until my lawyers have reviewed it and I am satisfied that I am in compliance with the law.

But let me just say that I will take this as a challenge to make

sure that I can earn your trust personally and be viewed as responding to what I view as one of my principal responsibilities,

which is to be accountable to congressional oversight.

Now, finally, I would also tell you that there was almost a tone

that no good deed will go unpunished by your opening statement.

This campaign is working. This thing is not screwed up. We are

proud of what we are accomplishing. I am following the directions

of Federal law, put together by Congressman Colby and his committee.

So if there is a different viewpoint now I want to listen very

closely and we can rewrite the law, but rest assured that is where

we are going.

On that, note, I again appreciate the chance to talk to you. That

is a layout of the money. It shows you our focus. And this isn’t

words; those are dollars. That is where the effort is going. And I

can track those dollars, each one of them, back into a piece of

paper—more than 100,000 documents which are on file at ONDCP.

We have a contractor who does this work for us, so I know where

the dollars are going.

Let’s run a couple minutes of that video clip. I think the committee will find that instructive.

Thank you, sir, for the chance to appear here.

[Video presentation.]

General MCCAFFREY. You are seeing, among other things, two

concepts there—one flighting and the other branding. And I am

sure most of us are sort of instinctively familiar with this, but

flighting is powerful. Rather than randomly produced events, what

we now have is a concept that you can’t escape, both the children

and their adult mentors. The first ones are parent effectiveness, for

example. The second concept is branding.

The resiliency of the message will be enhanced by this approach.

So, Mr. Chairman, again I thank you for the chance to be here,

and I look forward to responding to you or your committee members’ questions.

Mr. MICA. I thank you, General, for your presentation, and also

for your work and the campaign.

[The prepared statement of General McCaffrey follows:]

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Mr. MICA. I do have some questions.

First, let me say, in response to your last comments about our

requests for information, Mr. Colby has his responsibility in funding this program. The founding fathers set up this trilateral system

of operation where we have the appropriators funding, authorizers

authorizing, and we conduct investigations and oversight.

This started in 1808, and I think it is one of the great things

about our system versus other systems, and some have adopted

even the same basic system that don’t have the oversight responsibility.

So our responsibility isn’t to be bad guys or to give you a hard

time, but when you have a billion-dollar program—it was done

somewhat in a hurry because Congress wanted immediate attention to this, and now we do have an oversight responsibility.

We only asked for the documents and the reports that we think

substantiate and document how those funds were expended, and

we will do that.

In the beginning, we thought that we would have open access.

Some of the vendors and others indicated, ‘‘Anything you want, you

can see,’’ and then suddenly there was a shroud around all of the

information.

I do know that there are some constraints by which you can provide—some legal order in which you can provide the information to

Congress, but we will get the information. If it requires subpoenas,

we will get the information. If it requires working with your staff,

we will get the information. And I don’t think that we are interested in revealing anything confidential about payroll or names

and things of that sort, it is just basic information to find out how

the program is run and the cost effectiveness of it and how dollars

are expended.

I do have some specific information. I have sent repeated requests for specific information—project status reports, evaluation

reports—I will give you copies of these—subcontracts and subcontracting reports, none of which I think we should have a problem with, of which we still haven’t received to date.

But we will continue and we will have additional hearings and

go over how the money has been expended.

For example, I might cite one area. In the beginning—and I

think you testified in one of the—you said you had been here five

or six times.

General MCCAFFREY. This is the sixth time.

Mr. MICA. OK. In one of the previous hearings you had yourself

testified—I can get the transcript of it—that the initial efforts were

somewhat disorganized, I think you said, on the campaign, that

you stayed up late at night and bantered about how to approach

this. And then I guess the Porter and Novelli contract was one of

the initial ones that helped in organization.

In the beginning of ONDCP’s effort to jump start a media campaign—that was back in September 1997—a contract was let to

Porter and Novelli to develop an integrated strategy for this effort.

According to your staff, later in 1997 ONDCP, who had already had

a contract with Porter and Novelli, transferred funds to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Affairs Department then

contracted with ABT Associates for $1.9 million. ABT later subconVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:48 Nov 08, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66224.TXTX HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tracted back to Porter and Novelli for a contract worth $1.91 million. The result, as far as we can tell, is that ABT Associates received funds, but for what? And we are trying to figure out what

the difference was in the money there.

This is one example of the very beginning and core of this and

how money went from agency to agency or contractor. So that is

one question. I don’t know if you want to address that now or could

provide us with that information.

General MCCAFFREY. The request for subcontracts you made on

October 7, 1999, an oral request for a series of requests which we

are now working on. We will provide all that. I will be glad to provide it. I don’t think there is anything really sensitive in any of it

unless it is covered by proprietary information or payroll data or

something.

You requested the initial stuff the first part of September, the

contracts. You wanted them faxed down to you in your office in

Florida. We delivered them on September 16th. As you know, it is

a stack that high.

You asked for the next series of information on September 29th.

We delivered it on October 7th.

Basically, I have five guys, three lawyers. That’s it. Sooner or

later we are going to get you every bit of information you want. We

are happy to show it to you, a successful campaign.

I guess I am just asking from you, Mr. Chairman, an understanding that having groups show up unannounced to fish through

the files, we can’t do business that way.

Mr. MICA. First of all, Mr. Director—and I will submit to the

record a request February 24, 1999. ‘‘Please provide a list of all the

contracts that have been signed related to this campaign. Indicate

the name of the contractor. Describe the work provided and the

terms of the contract.’’ February 24, 1999.

So, again, we are requesting—— General MCCAFFREY. I think we have the same—— Mr. MICA. I have in March another request, March 31st. I would

be glad to put that in the record.

All we would like is some basic information about how the money

has been spent, copies of the contracts.

General MCCAFFREY. You have that now, right?

Mr. MICA. We also—— General MCCAFFREY. You have all the contracts and you have

12,000 documents relating to expenditures.

Mr. MICA. Well, we have found that. Now we have the problem

that we found that the contracts lead to subcontracts.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA. And we would also like——

General MCCAFFREY. Glad to give you that, too.

Mr. MICA. Because there are huge amounts of money here, and

then they go on down——

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. To other folks or to agencies.

Then the other thing that we would like to see, for example, we

have the—one of the contracts is with the National Institute of

Drug Abuse [NIDA]. HHS awarded a $34.8 million contract to

Westat to provide evaluation of phase three of the campaign.

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Our subcommittee requested from NIDA and Westat the required monthly reports of activities. Our staff was informed that,

while Westat does submit monthly financial documents, they have

not submitted monthly activity reports.

This is in direct violation of the deliveries and reporting requirements, as stated in the RFP—and I have a copy of that attachment.

So what we would like this is see what we can figure out is required by these RFPs, by the way things were supposed to be, and

then the evaluations of the report.

We are told in some cases ONDCP has not gotten copies of some

of these reports.

So this is another concern. It is a sizable chunk of money.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure. Now, that Westat Corp. evaluation is

extremely important to us, and I would be happy to share it with

you either in raw data form or periodically, as we have a more informed and thoughtful analysis. But I absolutely look forward to

providing you with Westat information.

Mr. MICA. Then we have another contract. I try to take them in

size. Fleishman-Hillard has a $48.7 million contract over 5 years,

and they are supposed to do the non-media-type campaign.

Fleishman-Hillard was required to report and provide report to

ONDCP on September 4, 1999, a report on basically what they had

done as far as their annual report.

At our last inquiry, it hadn’t been provided to ONDCP, and neither could our subcommittee staff get a copy of that.

Can we get a copy of that, and have you gotten that yet?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, you know, the day before yesterday

your staff asked. I have been informed about it. This is their requirement, which is a superb briefing by about 35 people with

charts, slides, et cetera, and I would be glad to give you a copy of

the slides.

There will be a subsequent written evaluation we will get in the

coming weeks, which I would be glad to provide you, too. But they

are right on target. They are absolutely focused on this mission.

My guess is I am getting damn near more than I can absorb from

these superb people.

But this is the presentation right here. It is in slide form.

Mr. MICA. One of my concerns is, again, we have identified 19

different contracts and agreements, and, I mean, this is a huge

program—— General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. With an incredible amount of money.

What we don’t have is a complete list, and we have been unable

to get a complete list of how many contracts and subcontractors the

campaign has, who is in charge of these, and who monitors the

deliverables. Each of these have deliverables.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA. Would it be possible to provide this subcommittee with

a complete list of the contracts, the subcontracts, and also something on the deliverables, and then a little chart as to who is in

charge of—— General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. Making sure that X, Y, and Z——

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General MCCAFFREY. Well, let me work through this with your

staff.

Let me, if I can, I am going to come over here and sit down and

listen very carefully for a good bit of time to what you want me

to do, and then I will go make it happen. All those deliverables are

in that stack of contracts your staff got. That is where they are.

They are defined in the law.

Mr. MICA. Yes. But that is not the question. The question is

whether you are monitoring this, ONDCP, because we see that—

and I have cited a couple——

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. Of deliverables, and your staff says,

‘‘Well, they aren’t delivered,’’ or, ‘‘We don’t know,’’ or ‘‘We don’t

know who is in charge.’’

General MCCAFFREY. Must have been confusing, because we do

know what we are doing, and I am in charge. I am accountable for

this stuff.

Mr. MICA. Well, do you have on one paper all the contracts and

subcontracts?

General MCCAFFREY. That is a very complicated thing. It might

be a good idea to do this, put it on a computer program, let you

all have access to it.

Mr. MICA. Another thing, too, even with smaller agencies and

smaller amounts of money, we have someone who conducts the

oversight. Now, we are conducting oversight from a congressional

standpoint.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA. But within agencies they have IGs and others who do

go in to look at has this been done, has that been done.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I am using the department IGs all

throughout government, by the way——

Mr. MICA. All right.

General MCCAFFREY [continuing]. To check expenditures.

Mr. MICA. Well, that would be great, and if we can get any communications or agreements——

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. For them to conduct that, just so——

General MCCAFFREY. Fortunately, you also let me hire a contractor, so I have an accounting firm that actually watches every piece

of paper. So we have $175 million in requests. We have, on delay,

$4.6 million. We will require each contractor to come back and answer to us. So we are doing just that kind of thing. It is very important we do that.

Mr. MICA. And that is part of what we need to conduct our responsibility, which is oversight.

Well, I have taken more than my time. I have additional questions and requests. We will submit them to you.

Again, we aren’t trying to be hard-nosed about this. We do have

an oversight responsibility——

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. And we want to do it in a proper fashion,

and we do need to make certain that these huge amounts of money

are accounted for.

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I have some questions, too, about the largest amount of money, which is $684 million over 5 years to Ogilvy & Mather, and we

want to find out a little bit more about the structure of the contract

and expenses, et cetera, and how that money is flowed through,

and percentages of money spent on actual hard media buys. But we

will get into that at a later point.

At this time, I will yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.

Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

General MCCAFFREY. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I will give each

of your committee members—this is the easiest way, it is dated,

that I found to follow it. It talks about, both in dollars and percent,

the amount we use on advertising versus other things—advertising, $191 million, for example, fiscal year 1999. Then it shows you,

when you get into the advertising piece of it, how much goes on

production media time.

So it is a good way to follow it, and we can take these pie charts

and follow them back into line item layout.

Mr. MICA. Well, just in quick response, we do have the general

numbers, the large numbers.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

Mr. MICA. What we are trying to do is look beyond that. And

there are other elements in there. We have questions about commissions, about subcontracting, about production costs. But, again,

we won’t get into them at this point until we get all of that information in hand.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I am going to have the contractor— I will come over, make sure I understand what you want, and then

I am going to task my contractors to respond specifically to any

question you have, and we will be responsive to your information.

Mr. MICA. That would be great, and we look forward to receiving

that information and cooperation.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to make it clear that I do agree that this is an oversight

committee and we should have oversight. I don’t want anybody to

be under the misconception that that is what I believe. I certainly

do.

But I want to—you know, there have been a lot of questions

here, General, and the chairman said something that I am just

kind of concerned about just a few moments ago. He talked about

making sure that he received these documents that you all just discussed, and he would do whatever was necessary to get them, and

I certainly understand that. But I would feel—I would be more

than remiss if I didn’t ask you this question. I think it would bother me.

You don’t have any problem providing documents to this committee, do you?

General MCCAFFREY. Not at all.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I mean, it—— General MCCAFFREY. We are proud of what we are doing.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So it is not a thing of trying to hide any information. You know, so often, I guess, when I come here—I keep saying

I am a new Member, but I guess I am feeling kind of old at this

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now, but it just seems like so often, you know, we subpoena this

and we subpoena that, and we have somebody here who wants to

cooperate, has a limited staff, as I understand it, and just want

some kind of structure in trying to get the information and some

understanding. Is that—I mean, is that a fair statement?

General MCCAFFREY. I think so. We would be glad to respond.

As a matter of fact, I think I ought to remind myself that I have

learned a tremendous amount from these congressional staffs. I

think there are some real experts over here, and some of the Congressmen have been involved in this longer than I have. So I am

glad to come over here and respond and learn from congressional

leadership.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, some concerns have been expressed about

using a paid media campaign instead of a donated air time and

commercials. Can you tell the subcommittee why the administration embarked upon a paid media campaign?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, a lot of what I initially knew about

the issue and continuing huge influence on my own thinking comes

from Jim Burke and the Partnership for Drug-Free America. These

people have been at it for a decade and know what they are talking

about.

Their efforts were coming down year after year in support. We

used to have three major networks, 85 percent of the media time.

Now there are seven major networks, and they got under half the

attention of the American people.

So the thing is changing, and we need to respond with it. Our

kids went to the Internet. We have to go there with them.

It is a very sophisticated industry, and we wanted to influence

youth attitudes, so PFA and ONDCP really have put this effort together, along with the Ad Council, which has been a huge impact

on us, too.

Mr. CUMMINGS. The media campaign seems to be targeted to deterring first-time drug use and casual drug use. Is that a fair statement?

General MCCAFFREY. No question. The biggest payoff, we think, in America is to save $2 million a head by not having kids get involved in extensive gateway drug-using behavior. If you don’t get

addicted, that is your savings to me as a taxpayer. So this is a prevention/education program aimed at children and their mentors.

Quite correct.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So if we have someone who has already started,

and not necessarily hard core, but just kind of experimenting, I

mean, is there any of this aimed at that youngster, too?

General MCCAFFREY. No, sir. We do have a series of measures

that we are enormously proud of. Secretary Shalala, Attorney General Reno, and I have put together now more than a $3 billion program which involves treatment interventions through a variety of

systems that are linked to the criminal justice system, health system, and welfare system. That is where we get at a young person

who is encountering chronic drug abuse.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, there have been some questions this morning about Ogilvy & Mather and Fleishman-Hillard. What kind of

oversight controls do you all have in house to control what they do,

because I think the committee is—I think all of us have said this

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in one way or another. We want to make sure—and I think you

share this concern—we want to make sure that our tax dollars and

our constituents’ tax dollars are spent in a cost-efficient and effective way, and so I am just wondering what kind of in-house oversight do you have over these folks who are being paid so handsomely?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, probably the best thing we did is we

took about 6 months and had a contractor write our RFP, so I have

contracting authority that—by analogy, I tell them I am going to

act as if I was a CEO of a corporation and I am going to demand

results out of these people. I have performance measures of effectiveness, and if they don’t produce, each year that contract is redoable, and I expect them to produce results.

We do have measures in place to chronicle whether they are

achieving their goals.

Now, having said that, let me hasten to add I think I am getting

a lot more than I am paying for. I am proud of what both these

corporations are doing, and the results are starting to show up.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Why do you say that, what you just said? I

mean, that is a very interesting statement. So often the public gets

the impression that we are not getting our dollars’ worth.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, one of the things we did is we wrote

a cost-plus contract. I mean, there is really no one—you would say

no incentive for any waste, fraud, and abuse here.

Having said that, Fleishman-Hillard, just as an example, is

under allocated cost.

I also look at the kind of work hours. These people are working

18-hour days on these issues. I know I am getting lots of corporate

support out of Ogilvy & Mather and Fleishman-Hillard and their

worldwide organizations. These are two industry giants. These are

some of the best people in the global community on these issues,

and they are really going to the wall for us.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I am about to run out of time, but just one question about the minority teen use of drugs going up. Can you comment on that for me?

General MCCAFFREY. I think we ought to be really concerned

about it. I have been holding a mirror up to America for the last

4 years reminding Americans that everyone is involved in drug

abuse.

One of the talking points was to say, ‘‘Look, lifetime exposure

rates to drugs go white, black, Hispanic.’’ And if you look at young

people 30 and under, African Americans have lower rates of drug

abuse than any other segment of American society.

The kids are going in the wrong direction. Now we are seeing— to include cigarette smoking. We are seeing African American

youth moving up to get in the same statistical threat group that

other Americans are, and I think it is a concern.

We have some wonderful subcontractors with ethnic advertising

focus.

The African American/Hispanic piece gets about 78 percent of the

$33 million focus on ethnic outreach, but we have an evaluational

loop in place.

The new material you will see coming out this year we hope will

better respond to the needs of these diverse communities.

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Mr. CUMMINGS. I noticed in the ads that you just showed us, if

I remember correctly, all of them dealt with parents; is that right,

all four of them?

General MCCAFFREY. We were flighting these ads so that there

will be periods where the central component will be parent effectiveness.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Right.

General MCCAFFREY. But there is also a teen-to-teen component.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes.

General MCCAFFREY. So it depends on which medium we are in.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes.

General MCCAFFREY. When they briefed me—when Partners for

a Drug-Free America comes in, they will tell me, ‘‘Here is who the

target is. It’s the 14-year-old age group, and this one is aimed at

Asian American.’’ So they will show me the copy with who they are

targeting, and it is a very sophisticated approach. It then gets tested before we go to production.

Mr. CUMMINGS. This is my last question. I guess we will get

somebody on another panel maybe to tell us this, but when you

have an ad like the one where these people—like the guy was doing

the e-mail, and it is the end of the day, and they are talking about,

‘‘You need to get a hold of your kid,’’ that is supposed to affect a

parent and a kid?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, parent effectiveness. Part of the message is to make sure parents are aware that when they talk to

their kids with a no drug use message, children actually are listening to it and are affected by it. We know that from National Institute of Drug Abuse studies. But we have to make sure parents understand that, because you will hear conversationally, ‘‘Well, we

shouldn’t talk about it. It just piques their curiosity, and more will

use drugs if you mention that.’’ That is a silly argument. If you applied the same thing to drunk driving or shoplifting or unprotected

premarital sex, it is just a—but those ads right there are after parent effectiveness.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

I will now recognize the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Thank you for being here today, General McCaffrey. We appreciate your continued efforts.

I have a couple of different questions, and a few very specific

questions.

We are working through the Drug-Free Schools and Safe Schools

Act, which hopefully will get done this fall, but it may spill into

next spring. And one of the things we are trying to do is tighten

up that program to where it has more direct anti-drug and safe

messages. Sometimes it gets pretty fragmented. In addition, our juvenile crime task force is proceeding ahead.

I applaud, in going through the details of your statement, your

interactiveness, and I hope that, particularly with the continued

concerns about juvenile crime and what some have focused on coming from that are the character counts programs and a lot of the

basic social fabric breakdown.

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I hope, in the mix of what you are doing with the direct antidrug groups, as well as the YMCA, and so on, we are seeing a big

revival of concern right now in this country about the general character, and to see, in as many of those programs as we can, that we

get it slipped in the anti-drug, anti-alcohol, tobacco, marijuana

messages, too.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And I just wanted to say we are pursuing that, and,

as we see this, it is likely to blossom in the next year as far as

where Congress is focused. I wanted to emphasize that.

I am intrigued and am unclear a little from your statement and

also, as comparing it to the statement that Dr. Johnston has presented later about what the free media program is working.

He states in his testimony that it has dropped from 1991 to 1997 from $365 million to $220. In your statement, I believe you said it

is 109 percent, which you had at, like, $145 million, and had the

in-kind from the industry basically agreeing with his $220.

General MCCAFFREY. His figure was dropped on pro bono?

Mr. SOUDER. From $365 to $220 from 1991 to 1997.

General MCCAFFREY. That is $365 million?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. To $220. And your figure—— General MCCAFFREY. But that is PDFA data, isn’t it? That is

Partners for Drug-Free America data?

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t know.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes. That is Jim Burke’s number. It is a

good number. That is what happened. That was the problem that

caused us to come ask you all for help.

Mr. SOUDER. And in his testimony he mentions things like the

Gulf war, and we have had a proliferation of other social problems

that they are focused. At the same time, when we put this amount

of media in, in effect we are getting back to where we were in 1991

figures, if you take the ad buy plus the pro bono.

Do you believe that can be leveraged more, or do you think—how

can we continue to push back to 1991 levels?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I—— Mr. SOUDER. I don’t want to seem ungrateful for what they are

giving.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. But the fact is it is a substantial drop, and, if necessary, Congress can take actions to force mandatory time.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes. Well, Mr. Congressman, thanks for

your work on safe, drug-free schools. It does need a re-look. Secretary Dick Riley and I did as best we could, put together a package. Those were good hearings you all had.

I don’t have a fixed view. I do think it needs to be re-looked. We

need accountability. Governors ought to be in charge, not Secretary

Riley and I, and we need reports. And I think we need

prioritization.

So your leadership on that—I will look forward to hearing how

Congress comes out on the bill.

Your comments on matching character ads, alcohol is a good one.

That 109 percent match includes 33 different organizations. Three

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of them are anti-alcohol in nature. We got $12 million worth of

anti-alcohol underage drinking ads on already. This is a huge contribution from the Advertising Council.

They have a Creative Review Committee, too, so these ads have

to pass muster as being scientifically accurate. They are tested, and

then they go out to media markets all over the country, and they

are getting used.

Unlike 10 years ago, they are stimulating, because, by law, we

tell them, ‘‘If you want a matching credit, you can’t put it on at 2

a.m. There are some rules here.’’ The media is responding magnificently.

So we are moving in that direction. When you see their work

that will come out shortly, you are going to be thrilled with it.

The question on whether or not we are getting—do we spend $195 million and get back where we were in 1991? No, sir. This

is enormously different. This is not just TV ads on national media.

This isn’t throwing things to the wind and seeing if they get used.

This is a very carefully planned, calibrated campaign with 102 different strategies where the media buy—when you talk to our leader, Shona Seifert here, you ought to ask her how do we go about

planning these media buys so we know where the target audience

is and we are going there with a message that they are going to

hear and shape their thinking.

I might also add that when we buy this stuff and we do it 18

months in advance, we get huge increases in coverage. That’s another thing that doesn’t come out in some of these briefing charts.

We essentially, if I remember, it was more than a 30 percent reduction in cost because of our buying plan.

Mr. SOUDER. Perhaps we will be able to followup some later in

this meeting, but I have a couple of specific questions that, if you

can’t respond here, if you can get back to me on. One is—and this

is a real fast one—the Partnership for Drug-Free America commercials were developed pro bono. I can’t tell, from looking through

your detail. It looks like a lot of what you are contracting out at

this point are placement, research, and so on. Are the actual creative development things—are we paying for that, or is that still

pro bono? And do you feel that, if we are paying for it, that the

qualitative difference beyond—there is some targeting, but could

that not have been done pro bono?

I know we have had extensive discussions here about particular

media subcontracts, but I am concerned in some of the dollars that

are showing up on Media Scope, in particular, and, without knowing a lot of the detail, the reports here are, on the surface, disturbing, because I can see that they have been challenged to some degree internally, and that’s one of the specifics that I, too, am concerned about as you proceed.

I have no idea. And let me just say, as a general rule—and I

would like to say this clearly for the record—I am most concerned

that the dollars get maximized. And I understand that that takes

research, auditing, placement costs, and all that kind of stuff, but

the particular sales that we made in going around the Authorizing

Committee and putting it in an appropriations bill, which is the

way this program was done, and the way Congress accepted it was

that this was going to actually be media time.

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Now, I understand that media time spent unwisely is wasted,

and you have had to try to balance some of those, and I understand

the development of the Internet and so on. I also understand the

importance of internal accounting and auditing, and I don’t want

to have the questions that we are asking become such a drain that

we are not accomplishing our first goal.

At the same time—and I have nothing but complete respect for

you, and I understand the frustration, but you also have to understand some of our concerns in this committee.

I tell you, in category after category, as we’ve looked at Interior

Department, as we’ve looked at the Justice department, as we’ve

looked at different things, there have been questionable contracts.

I don’t know how to balance this. I absolutely am not making a

single accusation. I am concerned that we are going to bog you

down for 2 weeks in paperwork instead of being out doing. But

there is one that the Media Scope comes under entertainment. It’s

$30,000 a month. We couldn’t get an explanation for it. We’d like

to have some kind of explanation. It may be a very logical explanation.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, Mr. Congressman, I think your concerns are appropriate. We should be able to answer all these questions.

I don’t think there is any—I don’t think we really have many

questions, that we see clearly what we are doing. We can identify

the various subcomponents. They are based on studies. There is a

very specific oversight responsibility.

That Media Scope, for example, we wanted to go get scientifically

valid data about the nature of drug abuse in music, movies, television, and we did it. We are doing it.

So it is important to us really to have a handle on—when I go

out to the Entertainment Industry Council and try to influence the

actual production of TV series—and we are doing that. We are not

violating first amendment rights, but we’ve gone out there.

Fleishman-Hillard is doing a lot of this for us. We are conducting

seminars so that writers, directors, and actors get a good insight

into the nature of drug abuse among adolescents.

We told them, ‘‘Put anything you want into this stuff, but make

it look like it really does in real life.’’ That’s a lot of what is going on with those kinds of programs.

But I would be glad to respond.

Let me make one statement categorically, though. We are not

buying ads. We are paying production costs, particularly when you

talk about 11 languages and going after the Hispanic market in

Spanish. By the way, we did that more than four times a week last

week. If your native language was Spanish, we talked to you four

times last week in Spanish.

And so we got to do production costs, particularly the struggling

minority advertising firms, but this is pennies on the dollar. We get

a huge impact for going about it this way.

By and large, though, the huge chunk of the dollars is still advertising media buy. Shona Seifert is the quarterback, and they do

know what they are doing, and I spend hours listening to her team

tell me until 11 p.m., where this stuff is going. We are following

it real closely.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes, sir.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Mr. Kucinich from Ohio.

Mr. KUCINICH. If Mr. Barr wants to go first, it is OK with me.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Barr.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the gentleman

from Ohio.

As I mentioned to you, General McCaffrey, I remain very concerned, as I know you are, about the drug legalization initiative in

the District of Columbia. It is these sorts of things, when the President issues a public statement that is very properly and accurately

read as supportive of that initiative in D.C. when he cites the efforts here in the Congress to block that as one of the reasons why

he vetoes the spending bill, that can undo tremendous gains that

are made through programs such as those that we are discussing

here today.

Have you, since the President’s veto message on the D.C. appropriations bill, had any discussions with the President or the White

House about that? Have you voiced your concern or opposition to

it?

General MCCAFFREY. Absolutely. I mean, it was very closely followed by us.

I sent my Deputy to testify in Congress for the committee. I was

glad to be able to do that. And I asked Dr. Don Vereen to come

over because it really made the point. He is a nationally known

drug research expert, a former NITA research scholar. He is a psychiatrist, a physician, a public health guy. And we wanted to unmistakably communicate—and we provided our briefing charts to

Congress. We want medical drugs decided by the National Institute

of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, not by political

referendum. This is not the way to go. This is a mistake.

We got a good study out of the American Academy of Sciences.

That’s what we support, not these referendum.

To be honest, in the short run it is sort of a crock. I hate to be

rude about it, but we got synthetic PAC, marinol, available in

pharmacies right now with a doctor’s prescription. We’d be glad to

study other canabanoids and see if they have symptom management capability, but smoked pot, a blunt stuck in your face in an

ICU, is unlikely to be medicine. That’s what the American Academy of Sciences said.

Now, on the other hand, Mr. Congressman, with your permission,

I would rush to avoid getting involved in a legitimate debate between Congress and the administration over home rule, et cetera.

I’ve tried to stay out of that and focus on the medical marijuana

issue.

Secretary Shalala and I and others are on the record and our position is unwavering.

Mr. BARR. I agree with your perspective. It is an issue about the

drugs and not about home rule. But it is just very disappointing

that the tremendous gains that can be made, whether it is through

a just say no or just say no type program or some of the ad campaigns that I think are effective that we’ve talked about here this

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morning can be undone by the position the President has taken on

this particular issue.

I also think that it would be a tremendous benefit to the education effort in which you and those with you here today and those

of us here in the Congress who believe in the anti-drug message

are trying to engage in if the President would take up this ball and

run with it, which he will not do, apparently.

I think the number of major speeches that this President has

given on addressing the issue of mind-altering drugs is less than

six in 7 years.

If the President would take to the airwaves, use the bully pulpit

of the White House, rather than indicating his support for a drug

legalization effort in the District of Columbia to get the message

out there that you are trying to get out and that these ads are trying to get out, it would help tremendously, I think.

I know or at least I presume that you’ve talked to him about this

and encouraged him to speak out on this issue, and I hope others

have, as well. It just doesn’t seem to be getting through, and I

think it is unfortunate, because it really could aid our effort, and

I would certainly encourage you to continue in those efforts to get

the President to speak out against mind-altering drugs with greater frequency and much more loudly.

Down in my District in Georgia, which is included in the Atlanta

media market—while I don’t have the opportunity to watch much

TV, I do listen to the radio occasionally when I am driving the District, and I have heard the ONDCP ads, and I think they are very,

very good. I hope we can do more of them.

As many of us in politics know, radio can be a very, very costeffective means of getting a message out. Is radio being utilized in

these efforts that we are talking about here today to the fullest extent?

While the TV ads I think are very effective in their own right,

you can get a tremendously larger bang for the buck in radio advertising. And is radio advertising, in your view, through this campaign, being utilized to the fullest extent? And if you could give me

some idea—it may be in some of the materials here—some idea of

the dollar amounts that are being spent on radio versus TV advertising.

And, by the way, one thing I would—and I don’t know whether

you have done this, but I would like to hear you on some of those

radio ads. I think the prestige that you would bring to it, being

identified as who you are and what you are doing, would be very,

very effective.

I know that other private groups use celebrities to do that. I’d

like to hear you on some of those ads. Is this something that you

would consider, or is it being done in some markets?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, Mr. Congressman, I thank you for

those remarks.

Let me, if I can, briefly talk about the President’s role in this.

And, again, I tell you bluntly I am a nonpartisan officer of government.

In 4 years, the President has supported me on this issue without

stint, and at times when it was politically tough on him to do it— needle exchange, medical pot, et cetera.

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Mostly, what I tell people is, ‘‘Look, at the end of the day in a balanced budget environment, we went from $13.5 billion to $17.8

billion.’’ I know congressional leadership was vitally important to

that, but I got that out of OMB and the President.

I am appreciative of his support, and he has also allowed me the

leadership responsibility of getting Janet Reno, Dick Riley, Donna

Shalala, the police, et cetera, involved in this. And he has spoken

out on medical pot, and we’ve got an administration position. This

isn’t mine, this is ours. Now—— Mr. BARR. Yes, but when he speaks out on it 2 weeks ago and

giving as one of his reasons explicitly for vetoing the D.C. appropriations bill the fact that Congress, on behalf of the people of this

country, included a measure against the legalization of marijuana

in D.C., it, at best, presents a contradictory or muddled message,

and I think it presents the wrong message.

General MCCAFFREY. There were these other issues, and it is unfortunate they all got cluged together, but I hear you, I recognize

what you are saying. I do want to, in all fairness, say the President

and his OMB Director have stood with me for 4 years and I am

appreciative of it.

Now, let me, if I can, go on to your other two comments.

Is radio effective? Absolutely. Huge leverage, targeted market,

local radio—they know who is listening to various kinds of shows.

They are on the air in Cantonese in San Francisco. If you want to

talk to moms and dads of first-generation families, you’ve got to go

on Chinese-language radio. Same thing in some Native American

dialects. So it is a huge tool.

Mr. BARR. Does that include southern in Georgia?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, that’s even different dialect, right. It’s

a nice dialect. But I will give you a breakout.

We are using that tool and it is very flexible, and the Advertising

Association has been a huge help in that, too.

On me being on ads, I am—we will take that into account. That

may be a good idea. I’ve done some pro bono with Montel Williams,

with a lot of the gold medal athletes. What a thrill to be with

Frank Shorter and some of these other national heros, Donna

Verona. So we can look at that.

But, by and large, what we are doing is we are going to this behavioral science expert panel. We are saying, ‘‘How do you influence a 12-year-old kid?’’ For example, you want to talk to a 12-year-old, go get a 14-yearold actor. That’s who they want to be like, not like the drug policy

director.

And we are pretty sophisticated in our thinking.

Mr. BARR. They might surprise you. Maybe we ought to be doing

something very subtly to make them want to be more like you than

some of these other folks.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I clearly talk to kids all the time. A

couple weeks ago, one of the high points of my life, 17,000 kids,

L.A. Coliseum, the DARE Convention. So I talk routinely to groups

of as many as 10,000 children—pride organizations, any group of

kids that show up here, we are engaged with them. We are on

video. We do videos all the time. If you are having a conference,

I will talk to the conference over video if I can’t get there.

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So your point is a good one. And Donna Shalala has been a tremendous partner doing the same thing with me.

Mr. BARR. Did you say, General—and I apologize and I appreciate the indulgence—that you would get me—do you have the figures on the breakdown on how much is being allocated to radio as

opposed to television?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, one of the problems is we’ve got 102

different media buying strategies, and essentially the note I got is

15 to 20 percent of the budget, depending on the State.

So, for example, in Congressman Mica’s District in south-central

Florida we go after heroin abuse at a very high rate. It’s a huge

problem to young people in that State. So the nature of the ads,

the very ads you are hearing or seeing, are different than the ads

you might see in Georgia. But 15 to 20 percent of the budget, depending on the State.

And it is very important—and our African American audience is

an example. That’s the way to talk to African American adolescents.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, General.

Mr. MICA. If I may, I am going to yield 2 minutes to Mr.

Kucinich, and then we will get the balance before the vote to you.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, and thank you, General McCaffrey,

for the work that you’ve been doing. I’ve worked with you on the

high-intensity drug trafficking matter, and I appreciate your help

there.

I saw the commercials when you ran them, and I’ve seen some

of them on TV in the market that I live in Cleveland. You know,

I think that this kind of an undertaking is so enormous that it has

to be regarded, the kind of effort that goes into it, so I wanted to

thank you and all those who are part of it.

You can understand, though, the chairman’s concern. There has

to be accountability on this, there’s so much money involved, so

that’s what we are here for, to ask questions.

I have a very brief question, and that is: the amount of money

that is being spent, the hundreds of millions of dollars in buying

this time, who is buying the time, and are they commissioned when

they buy the time or do they buy the time pro bono?

General MCCAFFREY. I am sorry, Mr. Congressman, would you

repeat that question?

Mr. KUCINICH. Somebody buys the time.

General MCCAFFREY. Right.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do they get a commission on the time that they

buy?

General MCCAFFREY. No. I think we ought to give you a detailed

layout on how the media buy is done, both mechanically and over

time.

Mr. KUCINICH. That would be nice. I used to do that. That’s why

I am curious about that.

General MCCAFFREY. I see.

Mr. KUCINICH. Because usually there is a 15 percent commission

involved.

Mr. MICA. Could you answer or somebody tell us if there is any

commission involved, because that is a $684 million——

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General MCCAFFREY. Well, let me give you a detailed answer.

Ogilvy & Mather gets a fixed fee on the contract.

Mr. KUCINICH. Does that include—is that exclusive of or does it

include the commission on the time that they buy? For example, if

someone buys $1 million worth of TV time, there are contracts

where they get 15 percent or $150,000.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Is this already included in their contract, or do

they get something over and above it, just out of curiosity.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes. Let me give you an answer for the

record on exactly how the fees are allocated.

Mr. KUCINICH. That would be fine. I appreciate it.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Again, thanks. This is very interesting. Keep up

the good work.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, may I add one subpoint, because I

think it is what the Congressman was trying to get to.

Mr. MICA. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. For example, as somebody who also placed media

buys—and I am sure this is a fairly easy thing to answer—but the

commission is usually around 15 percent. Sometimes they will kick

it down to 7 or 5. And, in fact, if you don’t take the commission,

they will lower your rates 15 percent, and that’s the difference in

the amount of contribution that you could——

Mr. MICA. Yes. Well, we also want to know if the $40 million was

paid to them and then subcontracts and then commissions on top

of that. It could mount up with a $684 million contract, a sizable

amount. But those are some of the questions we are trying to get

answered to Mr. Director.

Mr. Ose.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and I will

submit these for the record, given the time.

My concern has to do with the nicheing of the ads. That is, who

is taking, for instance, the 12 to 14-year-old Hispanic market, who

is taking the 14 to 16-year-old white market as it relates to these

contracts over here? I will submit that question for the record.

The second question has to do with the actual measurements of

effectiveness of the different ads and how to quantify that.

It would seem to me that the bottom line is: do the ads reduce

use of drugs?

General MCCAFFREY. Right.

Mr. OSE. And I am trying—I see the empirical evidence on the

charts as they exist, but I am trying to figure out how we could

get a quantification——

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. OSE [continuing]. Of the impact.

Mr. Chairman, if you will, I will submit that for the record, also.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes. Well, that is a question. You are right.

One is do they hear the ad, is it credible, does it influence their

attitudes, does it then influence their behavior, and that’s exactly

what we owe you over time, but not just from a macro level. We

have to see inside the target evidence.

Mr. OSE. You bring up an interesting point, because the graph

you showed us is a compilation of different, if you will, markets.

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General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. OSE. And we might be very effective in one market—— General MCCAFFREY. Absolutely. Good point.

Mr. OSE [continuing]. But not effective in another.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. OSE. And I’d like to correlate the relative effectiveness of

those markets to these different contracts.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes. That’s a good point.

Mr. OSE. For instance, Bates Advertising might have this market

and it is doing very well, and CSR might have that market and it’s

not doing very well at all.

General MCCAFFREY. That’s a good point.

Mr. OSE. That would be informative to me.

General MCCAFFREY. I think next year we will have a fight going

on over who gets credit for reducing youth drug abuse. That’s what

is going to happen, and trying to disentangle to what extent is this

community coalitions, is this the ad campaign, is this good law enforcement, is this the Rotary Club, YMCA. That’s what’s going to

happen.

At that point, we are going to have some tough—that’s why

Westat Corp.’s evaluation contract is important to us, to try and

understand that process.

By the way, Mr. Chairman, if I can, although I encourage you

to ask Ms. Seifert of Ogilvy & Mather—the note they passed me

was, ‘‘No commission on any buys.’’

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Ose.

Mr. Director, we do have additional questions, and we will be

submitting them both from the minority and majority to you, but,

again, we are not trying to be tough guys or mean guys in this

process; merely just sort through how some of these very substantial expenditures have been made, and some others that raise questions.

I didn’t get into it, but we had one instance here where our staff

talked to Mr. Richard Pleffner—is it Pleffner, your ONDCP contracting officer?

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. About an aspect of a Fleishman-Hillard contract in the amount of $186,000-plus, which then, I guess, they

subcontracted to Media Scope in the amount of—and there were expenditures in the amount of $156,000 for entertainment, and we

asked for some documentation on description of the services that

were provided. Mr. Pleffner could not tell us exactly what that was

for.

These are just basic questions on, in some cases, very significant

amounts of money. The questions I also raised about the subcontract for Porter Novelli, what happened to the $50,000, the difference in that contract, and some of the other questions that we’ve

raised, particularly the NITA contract and the funds that went

back and forth through that agency.

So, again, we are not trying to be mean or ornery or overreaching

our bounds, but merely trying to find out how these funds are expended.

General MCCAFFREY. Yes.

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Mr. MICA. So we look forward to receiving answers and replies

and working with you and, again, seeing that this program is effective and has effective oversight.

General MCCAFFREY. Sure.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MICA. So we thank you for your cooperation and we thank

you for your efforts in getting this campaign kicked off and working

with us to date.

Without objection, the record will be left open for 30 days to submit additional questions to this witness by both the minority and

the majority. So ordered.

I thank you, Mr. Director. We are going to excuse you at this

time.

We have a vote, and the subcommittee will stand in recess for

approximately 15 minutes and we will reconvene with the panel at

that time.

[Recess.]

Mr. MICA. For our second panel—and we welcome them—this

afternoon we are going to hear on our second panel from Ms. Tinker Cooper, who is with Families Against Drugs from Orlando, FL.

We are also going to hear from Mr. Harry Frazier. Mr. Frazier is

senior vice president of Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Washington, DC.

And then we are going to also hear from Ms. Shona Seifert of

Ogilvy & Mather of New York City.

You are all standing. You know that you are sworn. This is an

investigative panel of Congress.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MICA. The witnesses answered in the affirmative.

I would like to welcome all three of you here. We have, I think,

the two major firms that have been contracted to provide assistance with our paid media campaign, and we also have one individual who is from central Florida who I have had the opportunity to

know. Unfortunately, she is the mother of a victim of an overdose

of heroin. Her son, Joe Stevens Cooper, died 2 years ago from a

heroin overdose. She has taken that particular personal tragedy

and turned her efforts toward trying to make positive progress in

our war on drugs and her own effort, and she has combined her

efforts with other parents of those who have lost loved ones in this

tragic problem we face of illegal narcotics and its ravages. She is

not only working with other parents and others in the community

such as our sheriff, Kevin Berry, but also with Governor George

Bush and others to bring the message to our community and across

the State of Florida from the private sector and private individual

efforts how we can bring attention to our young people and others

in our community about the ravages and potential fatal damage

that can be done by illegal narcotics.

So we are going to hear several different perspectives, and the

first individual we will call on will be Ms. Tinker Cooper, and,

again, she represents today before our subcommittee Families

Against Drugs, and she is from Orlando.

Welcome, Ms. Cooper. You are recognized.

STATEMENTS OF TINKER COOPER, FAMILIES AGAINST DRUGS,

ORLANDO, FL; SHONA SEIFERT, OGILVY & MATHER, NEW

YORK CITY, NY; AND HARRY FRAZIER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, FLEISHMAN-HILLARD, INC., WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. COOPER. Thank you.

I am a mother of one of the many young people that have died

in recent years in central Florida from drug overdose.

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After Joe died, I started doing drug education, and that’s when

I realized I really didn’t know too much about the drugs of today.

So I teamed up with Captain Ernie Scott of the Orange County

Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit, and I got myself educated. Together

we have since formed the nonprofit organization Families Against

Drugs, which initially was a support group for families of overdose

victims, because society views the death of our kids as somehow

less significant then a death of a child from any other means.

We have since turned into an action group. We didn’t want to sit

around crying and feeling sorry for ourselves. We wanted to do

something about this drug epidemic. So we turned into an action

group, and we do education, legislation and rehabilitation. At the

moment we are currently working on developing an overdose hotline that is routed not through law enforcement but directly to fire/

rescue so that the kids can feel comfortable in calling for help in

an overdose situation without worrying about the law.

We have been concerned about the type ads that we are seeing

on TV for anti-drug messages. The kids today are very sophisticated. They live in a high-tech world with the Internet and everything. These ads with pretty young women smashing up kitchens

with a frying pan and dancing ballerinas on top of a jewelry box,

have no meaning to them. They need to see reality.

We are under the impression—and hearing here today from Mr.

Mica the amount of money that has been allocated for these ads

and to the donated time and money, the figure is close to half a

billion. That’s a lot of money. We need to start putting that money

into something that is really going to work with these kids. If anything is going to help, it has got to stop these kids now.

I, along with two other parents in central Florida, helped the Orange County Sheriff’s Office make a video called, ‘‘Overdose: End

of the Party.’’ We used actual crime scene photos of young people

as they were found in death, because we felt they needed to see the

reality of drug overdose. It is not a pleasant video, but it really

wasn’t meant to be pleasant. It was to be a hard-hitting, in-yourface type thing to get their attention. And it is working.

These are not actors. They have real kids in them, real blood,

and they are really dead. But we know of several young people that

have gone into detox from heroin after seeing the video.

Every single time we show it in schools, rehabs, jails, anywhere

that we show it, kids always come up to us and say, ‘‘If I had seen

something like this before I got involved with drugs, I never would

have started using.’’

We have three different versions of this. We have a youth version, an adult version, and a Spanish version to reach the Hispanic

community, and we are currently working on another video that we

hope will be equally as effective showing all aspects of drug use.

We have parents that have lost their kids to overdoses. We have

parents that have their kids in rehab now, or still on the street

using. We have parents that have lost children in car wrecks because they were drinking and drugging. We have parents who have

lost kids to suicide because of alcohol and drug use. We even have

a family that right now is living the nightmare of caring for their

20-year-old son, who has been a vegetable since April 11th from a

drug overdose. And we have people in the group who have lost a

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sibling or a spouse or a friend. We also have kids that have successfully completed treatment.

So we are putting together a video of this nature so that the kids

can see reality. We feel that they need to see this. These are the

things they need to see—reality of drug use, not fantasy. They need

to know what each drug is going to do to their bodies and their

minds. They need to know what their drug use is going to do to

their personal life, their families, their friends. They need to know

their options.

Their options are: death, coma, jail, rehab, wasted lives. They

need to know that the drugs of today are so much more potent and

dangerous than they were in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, and the

chance of addiction is very high with these drugs.

The drug addicts of today are not people with shady pasts and

no hope for a future. The drug addicts of today are my kids and

your kids, and we need to do a better job of educating them and

their parents, because I will tell you those parents don’t have a

clue what’s going on out there. I thought I was pretty up on drugs,

but after Joe died I didn’t know anything.

We need to educate the parents as well as the kids.

Congressman Mica has asked me to show a 21⁄2 minute excerpt

from the video, ‘‘Overdose,’’ and when we get enough funds to finish the one we are working on, I will see to it that he gets a copy

of that to share with you, too.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak here before you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cooper follows:]

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Mr. MICA. We will have questions, but at this time we will go

ahead and show that 21⁄2 minute segment.

[Videotape presentation.]

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Thank you for that segment and also for

your personal and private sector efforts to get this message out.

Now we will hear from—I guess we will do this in order of magnitude of expenditures. Ms. Shona Seifert with Ogilvy & Mather

from New York City, you are recognized.

Ms. SEIFERT. Good afternoon, Chairman Mica, representatives of

the subcommittee. I am honored to be here today and I welcome

the opportunity to share our insights with you and answer your

questions on the national youth anti-drug media campaign.

As a context for discussing the campaign, I’d like to summarize

my own background and the credentials of Ogilvy New York, the

company I represent.

I have 16 years experience in the advertising industry, spanning

three continents and every consumer product category. I’ve led and

implemented campaigns for products as diverse as BMW automobiles, American Express charge cards, SmithKlein Beecham

Pharmaceuticals, Huggies diapers, Gillette shaving systems. Almost every client I have worked for has been a Fortune 500 company, and I’ve consulted with several of the world’s most respected

pro bono organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund.

I spent 4 years with Ogilvy in London, 5 years working for

Ogilvy across the Asia Pacific Rim, and the past 7 years in New

York.

I have been personally involved in developing advertising in

many of the world’s languages—Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog,

Malay, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and,

obviously, English.

Ogilvy was appointed as the advertising contractor for the National youth anti-drug media campaign in January 1999. We were

awarded the contract after an extensive 8-month review process involving hundreds of other communication companies.

Ogilvy was selected because of its unique credentials and market

clout. Our media buying organization purchases more national

broadcast media than any other advertising agency in this Nation.

In fact, we buy more than $2 billion of air time every year.

This gives us unique access to the lowest possible pricing, and

Ogilvy has generated broadcast media savings for ONDCP of over

$25.6 million in this year, alone. And those are only the broadcast

buy savings. There are more savings beyond those.

We know that such cost efficiencies are important to you, Mr.

Chairman, and members of this subcommittee and to the constituents and taxpayers that you so ably represent.

Our global media buying organization buys more media than any

other communications company in the world. This gives us unparalleled negotiating leverage in our dealings with global media vendors such as Time Warner and ABC Disney.

We are also the largest buyer of interactive media in the country.

This allows us to maximize the efficiency and the reach of every

taxpayer dollar.

In addition to negotiating and buying the paid media component

of the campaign, Ogilvy is also responsible for negotiating and imVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:48 Nov 08, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66224.TXTX HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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plementing the media match. This is pro bono time, space, and programs donated by media vendors.

We’ve already negotiated $167 million in media match for phase

three of the national youth anti-drug media campaign, which, as

you know, began in September 1999. That’s $167 million of free

media. Nobody in the advertising industry does that for any other

advertiser.

And I want to just point out, there was a question in one of the

previous panels about commission. Ogilvy earns no commission on

any of the media buying and planning. Our contract prohibits it.

Our contract is a cost-plus fixed fee contract. And we earn a fixed

fee which is equivalent to 1 percent of the contract. And, to give

you a context, typically media commissions, when they are paid to

advertising agencies in this country are between 12 and 15 percent

of a contract, and we are earning 1 percent. And that’s regardless

of how much media we buy. So even if the media budget increases,

our fee does not.

The national youth anti-drug media campaign is without precedent. It is truly the gold standard in leveraging private sector best

practice and the world’s leading behavioral science. No other client

of Ogilvy anywhere in the world goes to the lengths that ONDCP

does to make sure their campaign is science-based, measurable, totally integrated, and continuously improved.

For example, the process for advertising development ensures

every advertisement is based on facts from behavioral science, insights from target audience specialists, feedback from our target

audience, and the expertise of the best minds in the advertising industry through our partnership with the Partnership for Drug-Free

America.

Ogilvy is extremely proud of our accomplishments to date for the

national youth anti-drug media campaign. We are constantly

searching for opportunities to make this campaign more effective.

For example, we are deploying leading edge econometric modeling

to develop optimal media plans, and a new tracking study to measure the success of every message against its target audience, as it

airs.

In accordance with the goals of the national drug control strategy, we will make a difference in reducing drug use in this country.

We have the resources and we have the know-how, and our entire

company is committed to the success of this unprecedented landmark campaign.

Before I close, I would just like to make a few comments in response to the statement by Ms. Cooper.

And I wanted to say, Ms. Cooper, I am very sorry for your loss.

I am even more sorry that the national youth anti-drug media campaign wasn’t airing when Joe Cooper died, because maybe if it had

been, this wouldn’t have happened.

Ms. Cooper is totally right—we need to get kids’ attention. She

is totally right—we need the facts about drugs and we need to get

those facts out to our kids. That’s why we have an advertising development process that is incredibly rigorous.

Agencies are briefed by the Partnership for Drug-Free America

with pages and pages of strategy and consumer insights. Those

agencies present back to the Creative Review Council of the PartVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:48 Nov 08, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66224.TXTX HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nership for Drug-Free America. They then have to present their

work to a panel of behavioral change experts and target audience

specialists who comment on the advertising and make changes. It

is then presented to General McCaffrey, and then those ads that

are seen to be suitable to move forward with are tested with a target audience, whether it is kids or adults or specific ethnicities, and

we look to see whether those ads change kids’ minds.

The advertising that Ms. Cooper has described, which we call ‘‘negative consequence’’ advertising, showing kids the consequences

of drug use, is a very important message platform within our campaign, but it is only one of four platforms that we use to talk to

kids, because all the behavioral science indicates you can’t just

show them what happens when you do drugs. And if we just show

them that drugs may result in death, these kids—the kids that are

primarily the target of this campaign are ‘‘tweens,’’ they are 11 to

13-year-olds. They think they are invincible. They do not believe

they will die if they do drugs, so we need other messages, too.

I will leave for the records this chart here, which shows the message platforms and the 360-degree approach that General McCaffrey was describing earlier. One of these message platforms—it will

actually be airing in November of this year—is negative consequences. It’s exactly the kind of ads Ms. Cooper was describing.

And there are other platforms on here, too.

So I am so sorry for your loss, and I really hope that other kids

will be prevented from using drugs by this campaign.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Seifert follows:]

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Mr. MICA. We will withhold questions until we’ve heard from all

three witnesses.

The next panelist is Harry Frazier, and he is a senior vice president with Fleishman-Hillard from Washington.

You are recognized, sir.

Mr. FRAZIER. Thank you.

On behalf of Fleishman-Hillard, thank you, Chairman Mica, and

the subcommittee for this opportunity to discuss our role in the national youth anti-drug media campaign.

We are the campaign’s non-advertising or communications contractor. That means we manage all program and outreach initiatives that fall outside of paid advertising. We began work in December 1998, and are 10 months into building a landmark integrated communications program of which we are extremely proud.

We aggressively pursued this contract and greatly reduced our

fee in order to ensure our bid was competitive. We did so because

we recognized the national importance of the program, we believed

in the campaign design, and we knew we would be effective.

The Fleishman-Hillard account team continually coordinates

with advertising and other campaign contractors and partners. We

share information, identify opportunities, and work together to deliver the same messages and same platforms to the same audiences.

I am co-director of our team, with primary responsibilities for account management, and Beverly Schwartz, a nationally recognized

behavioral scientist, is our other co-director.

Although our contract only represents about 5 percent of the

campaign’s annul budget, it is an essential part of the overall communications strategy. Our contract and funding are totally separate from yet fully integrated with the advertising contract and

other media campaign expenditures. Our goal is to complement the

advertising with strategic communications that most effectively influence youth and parents. This is the same approach the Nation’s

top marketers use to promote products, services, and ideas. It is

also the method behavior change experts prefer for public education.

By reaching beyond advertising to where youth and parents live,

work, and play, the campaign literally surrounds them with antidrug messages.

To be clear, Fleishman-Hillard does not do advertising for the

campaign. We build sustainable programs and partnerships that

motivate audiences to talk about and act on the campaign messages they see and hear through the advertising.

Our behavior change approach encourages audiences to adopt

campaign messages into their daily lives and extend them into

their own communities.

We also maximize the opportunities generated by the pro bono

match requirement of the advertising contract. Every activity must

be on message and on strategy. We strive to maximize the Federal

Government’s investment by developing the products, relationships,

and advocates that will continue to deliver campaign messages well

beyond our involvement and well after the media campaign’s advertising program ends.

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Our areas of work are outlined in ONDCP’s testimony and in our

written testimony; however, to briefly recap, we conduct outreach

in four primary areas: public information, partnerships, entertainment, and interactive.

First, public information activities use the news media, direct

outreach, and special events to generate a steady flow of campaign

messages to youth and adult audiences. In 1999 alone, we’ve generated more than 124 million media impressions of these messages.

Second, we’ve enlisted thousands of partners who make it possible for a wide variety of public and private organizations to participate in and extend the reach of the campaign. A blast e-mail

system regularly advises more than 45,000 stakeholders of campaign activities, and they, in turn, reach millions of their constituents.

We are having success partnering with national organizations

such as the YMCA, which serves 18 million people and 9 million

kids and has incorporated media campaign messages into their

publications and curriculum and training materials.

Third, we work with the entertainment industry, both to help deliver messages through celebrity involvement and to deglamorize

drug use through script suggestions.

Fourth, we take full advantage of the power of the Internet, in

part by developing and maintaining multiple drug prevention

websites where millions are visiting to learn and interact with others. Our sites link to hundreds of other parenting, education,

sports, and health sites on the web.

We are very pleased to see, Chairman Mica, that the campaign’s

teen site, FREEVIBE.COM, is linked to the drug prevention area

on your own website. We encourage other Members of Congress to

follow your lead.

Finally, our activities reach diverse audiences, thanks to a team

of minority-owned communications and social marketing agencies

that know exactly how to communicate with African American,

Hispanic, and Asian audiences.

Our ongoing relationship with ONDCP involves a greater level of

technical and finance review, approvals, and reporting than any

other Fleishman-Hillard client. We individually detail and budget

our programs for approval prior to execution and have daily interaction with ONDCP staff, who review our projects in progress and

participate in our internal and external meetings and activities.

In addition, we submit weekly and monthly written reports and

conduct regular activity briefings for Director McCaffrey and his

staff. These briefings include comprehensive progress reviews, program updates, reports on initiatives, and results, budget, and expenditure briefings.

In closing, we believe in working for a drug-free America and are

committed to this campaign. We are proud of our accomplishments

and are happy to answer your questions or further elaborate on our

activities.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Frazier follows:]

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Mr. MICA. I’d thank all of our witnesses for their testimony.

First of all, Ms. Cooper, this is a pretty big program we’ve undertaken at the Federal level, $1 billion. It’s not quite in the expenditure category of your local effort. But this is public money, it is a

public trust, and we want to make certain that it is spent effectively.

You’ve seen some of the ads that have been played to date.

You’ve heard Ms. Seifert talk about your particular situation. What

is your candid evaluation of what we’ve done to date? Would it

have made any difference, in your estimation, in your son’s case?

Just tell us what you think about the campaign. And we spent several hundreds of millions of dollars so far, plus the donated component, probably a half a billion to date. Can you give us your candid

assessment?

Ms. COOPER. Those of us that have already lost our kids and the

families that I deal with whose kids are in rehab now or still on

the streets firmly believe that they are just not strong enough.

These ads, the information has to be pretty much in your face and

reality, and we just feel very strongly that the ads to date are not

strong enough to get to the kids.

Mr. MICA. Ms. Seifert said that part of their message, rightly, is

geared at parents. And General McCaffrey also said they targeted

Orlando. You must have seen some of those. You are a parent.

What do you think of that effort in your setting with our problem

with heroin there?

Ms. COOPER. Again, not strong enough. I think the parents definitely need to be educated.

Mr. MICA. Have you seen those ads geared at parents in Orlando?

Ms. COOPER. Not these particular ones, but I have seen and I did

like a couple of them, one being a little girl being asked by somebody, ‘‘What has your mother told you about playing with matches?

What has your mother told you about strangers? What has your

mother told you about drugs?’’ And each time the little girl responded appropriately about matches and strangers, and when

asked——

Mr. MICA. What about, again, directed toward parents and making a difference yet? If you had seen those ads that you have seen

now, do you think they could have helped you with your son’s situation?

Ms. COOPER. Well, not really. I did educate my kids about drugs,

but I didn’t educate them properly because I didn’t know about the

drugs today. I didn’t know what was going on in the clubs downtown.

I think you may have seen the video on the undercover video of

the raves downtown. I was blown away by this.

If I had seen that before Joe died, there’s no way that boy would

have been going to raves downtown. I don’t think the parents have

any idea.

I know we have parents in our group that actually paid, gave

them the money to go to some of these zen festivals and the raves,

not having any clue what was going on at them.

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I think parents need to be educated about the drugs today and

about what is going on, what their kids are actually exposed to, not

just, ‘‘Hey, you need to talk to them.’’ Yes, they do need to talk to them, but they need to get educated

what is out there, what are their kids exposed to.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Frazier or Ms. Seifert, before today have either of

you talked to a mother who has lost a child to heroin overdose?

Ms. SEIFERT. Yes.

Mr. MICA. You have?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, we have. Interestingly enough, Ms. Cooper’s— when I was listening to her testimony, it is the exact type of thing

that we are doing.

A lot of people hear the term ‘‘PR’’ and think of something corporate or political, but what she is doing is classic, traditional PR.

She’s getting out to a community. She’s trying to inform people.

She’s trying to give them real-life examples to make messages real

for them and give them direction and some incentive to do something.

Mr. MICA. One other question about your experiences. Did you

know the individual who lost a child or a relative to drug overdose?

Ms. SEIFERT. Yes.

Mr. MICA. You did?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Well, what I think is absolutely startling is we have

three people, one who has lost a son in this and we have two of

our witnesses who are participating in this, and each of you know

and have talked to families that have losses. This is an incredibly

widespread problem.

The problem we have in central Florida is we have been losing

almost one or two a week to heroin. We have had this campaign,

and on the floor last week I cited several heroin overdoses, drug

overdose deaths just in that past weekend, and it is not abating,

even with the ad campaign. That’s the scary part of it.

Let me, if I may, ask our two contractors a couple of questions.

First of all, Ogilvy & Mather have the largest share of this contract. It will be $684 million, I think, total, with a fixed fee of about

$8 million over that period of the expenditure, and you said——

Ms. SEIFERT. Actually, Chairman Mica, it is an annual contract.

Mr. MICA. Yes.

Ms. SEIFERT. So the contract is currently valued at $152 million,

of which about $1.5 is the fixed fee, so it is almost exactly 1 percent.

Mr. MICA. And you said it is cost plus the fixed fee. Is the cost

only the cost for airing, or are there other costs like production and

subtracted——

Ms. SEIFERT. The contract is for $152 million. The great majority

of that expenditure is for the paid media, but out of our $152 million contract we also pay $3 million for production of the advertising.

But, as General McCaffrey explained—— Mr. MICA. Are there any—— Ms. SEIFERT [continuing]. It is not labor.

Mr. MICA. Right. Are there any other subcontracts or—what I am

trying to do is look at the big picture, how much money is spent.

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We commend you for offering your services in this fashion with a

fixed fee, but we also want to find out exactly how the dollars are

expended.

So there’s $3 million, you said, in production, approximately?

Ms. SEIFERT. Yes.

Mr. MICA. And are there any subcontracts let on your contract?

Ms. SEIFERT. Yes. There are five subcontracts which—these are

all mandated by the RFP that we were awarded by the contract.

We have to have a—— Mr. MICA. And do we have copies of all of those subcontracts?

Could you provide us with copies of the subcontracts?

Ms. SEIFERT. I can certainly provide copies of all the contracts to

ONDCP so that—because we are contractually obligated to

ONDCP, and I think they will forward them to you.

Mr. MICA. Right. And we will ask for copies of them.

Again, it is a little bit different client. It’s the people of the

United States. Our job is merely, when we appropriate a program

of this magnitude—and it wasn’t a rush fashion, but it was in an

expedited fashion. We now want to see how the funds are expended. So if you could—and we will also ask the general for that.

And that’s one of the problems we’ve had to date is just trying

to get that information.

There are no other fees or commissions or costs other than those

subcontracts and the production amount; is that correct?

Ms. SEIFERT. Anything that is not media would be production of

the advertising, which is not labor. As I said before—— Mr. MICA. Right.

Ms. SEIFERT [continuing]. It is purely the actual third party production cost.

The cost of subcontractors is one subcontractor for each of the

ethnic audiences that we need to reach with the campaign, so there

would be one for African American audiences, for Asian, for Native

Americans, and so forth.

Mr. MICA. What I am trying to get to really is I want to get to

the rock bottom—and maybe you could provide the subcommittee

with this—of how many dollars actually go on television or radio.

You are doing television. Are you doing radio?

Ms. SEIFERT. Every single medium, because this is a surround

campaign.

Mr. MICA. All right. What we want to find out is how many hard

dollars are going into that and what other expenses there are. So

if we have $195 million and we take $127, we have $40 over here

next to you, or whatever is expended. I don’t want to be exact here.

But then we take out so much for production and so much for other

expenses. We are trying to find out the bottom line of dollars going

into that, so if you could provide——

Ms. SEIFERT. We can certainly provide that.

Mr. MICA. We would appreciate that.

Mr. Frazier, one of our concerns was, in talking with the ONDCP

subcontractor, all of these contracts have reporting requirements.

One of the major reports was the September 4th evaluation report,

which we weren’t able to get up until just before this hearing.

Did Fleishman-Hillard deliver a written evaluation report to

ONDCP on or before September 4th, as required?

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Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir, we have delivered dozens of reports—— Mr. MICA. No.

Mr. FRAZIER [continuing]. Including—— Mr. MICA. Did you provide an evaluation report on or before September 4th, as required under the terms of the RFP? Do you know?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir. We did that in two ways. We did a full review of our activities in June to date, and we did another one in

September. That one was, indeed, a week after the September 4th

date.

Mr. MICA. OK.

Mr. FRAZIER. It was a comprehensive review.

Mr. MICA. It was delivered. But it was delivered afterwards. OK.

And one of the problems we’ve had—and we’d like to get copies

of it, too—are, again, some of the subcontracts here. How many

subcontracts do you have?

Mr. FRAZIER. We have six subcontractors.

Mr. MICA. Do we have copies of all of those now?

Mr. FRAZIER. I don’t know what you do or don’t have, but we are

happy for you to have them if ONDCP—— Mr. MICA. I am seeing your head go in one direction, my staff

going in another direction, and people in the audience going in two

directions.

Do we have copies of all of those six subcontracts? My staff says

no, we do not.

Could you provide us, through ONDCP, those six contracts?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir. And let me just state—— Mr. MICA. The reason, we have parts of the information. And,

again, we are not trying to be hard guys, but you have categories

of expenditures. For example, in a request—and I cited this to the

drug czar, Mr. McCaffrey—we asked Richard Pleffner, who is the

ONDCP contracting officer, for an explanation of a subcontract that

went to Rogers and Associates, who went and, in turn, subcontracted to Media Scope. Media Scope submitted vouchers for entertainment in January for $27,000, approximately, for entertainment,

in February for $29,000, approximately, and March for entertainment—I got two in March for entertainment for $33,000-plus. I’ve

got, in May 1999, another $33,000.

What we are trying to find out is if, you know, was this a party,

was this—it must have been a hell of a bash. But maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe, in fact, it was a very legitimate expenditure. But our job

is to conduct some oversight.

And the problem we have is that your subcontractor, Rogers and

Associates, has, in turn, subcontracted to Media Scope, and these

things get further away from us. And these people may have done

an incredible job that should be announced to the public. On the

other hand, when we have these entertainment expenditures just

in this short period for $156,000, we want an explanation.

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir. I am happy to address. I know——

Mr. MICA. That’s a specific request, so—— Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir. We are happy to fulfill that in writing.

Mr. MICA. You don’t even have to submit that one to ONDCP.

You can tell us directly. And we are leaving the record open for 30

days.

But you see our dilemma in this.

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Let me ask you another question. You have offered——

Mr. FRAZIER. Do you mind if I just respond to that real quick?

Mr. MICA. Go ahead.

Mr. FRAZIER. To be clear—and I think this is kind of symptomatic of you perhaps not having all the information you need to

understand what we do. Very simply, that was entertainment industry outreach they are doing. They are holding creative briefings

for people like the Writers Guild. They held a workshop for children’s television writers that was convened at the Disney Studios

at no cost to the government. They are doing entertainment industry outreach, and perhaps it wasn’t clear in the documentation that

you saw, but that’s what that is for.

Mr. MICA. Again, we’d like to get this.

And let me say that you, in particular—I haven’t dealt with Ms.

Seifert. We will get to know her better as this progresses. But you

and your firm have been most forthcoming and open, and we appreciate that.

Now, let me ask you this. One of the problems we had is getting

the information you submitted to ONDCP, and you say you have

provided all of that information. Has ONDCP directed you not to

provide us with any information?

Mr. FRAZIER. Not specifically, sir. In this process—and we’ve

never been through a formal review process like this with a congressional committee—it was our understanding that contractually

the way the process works is that you have to request those documents from ONDCP. They did not tell us not to give anything directly to you.

I was looking for clarification on what the exact rules were in

that case, but let me state unequivocally we are happy for this

committee to see anything that we have done and any of our

records. We would prefer and request that any proprietary information about the salaries of our employees and that type of thing that

obviously would pose competitive challenges for us not become public, but if your staff would like to see them we are happy to open

our books behind closed doors.

Mr. MICA. We just would like explanations. I’ve got another example: entertainment, March 31, 1999, celebrity involvement,

$5,682. It may be a legitimate expense, but what we want is some

detail on how——

Mr. FRAZIER. We are happy to provide that.

Mr. MICA [continuing]. These funds were expended.

Now, you tell me there are six contracts.

Mr. FRAZIER. Subcontracts. yes, sir.

Mr. MICA. Subcontracts. Do you have any idea how many subcontracts there are to the subcontracts?

Mr. FRAZIER. Only one that we are aware of.

Mr. MICA. The Media Scope one?

Mr. FRAZIER. That’s the Media Scope one.

Mr. MICA. All right. And we’d also, Ms. Seifert, like to know

about any subcontracting that is done through any of your contracts.

Ms. SEIFERT. There are none, sir.

Mr. MICA. There are none? OK. All right. Thank you.

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There are detailed reporting requirements in these RFPs. Again,

other than the September 4th report, the evaluation that was due

then, do you know of any other reports that have not been submitted on time?

Mr. FRAZIER. No, sir.

Mr. MICA. OK. And, again, this is a little bit different situation

in the private sector, but we do have detailed reporting that is required. Do you find that overly cumbersome, or you are able to

comply with that?

Mr. FRAZIER. Well, as I referenced before, the level of reporting

in this particular contract is more extensive than anything we’ve

ever experienced as an agency.

We do, by the course of our business, keep track of our time for

every hour, every minute that our staff works, and I personally go

through those records at the end of every month, before we send

an invoice, and look at every single hour that our 30-plus people

have spent on this at Fleishman-Hillard, and we ask our subcontractors to do the same.

We keep all of that. What’s different in this contract is the level

of detail that we are required to submit to the government. We are

used to doing activity reports. In this case, we do them weekly and

monthly, as well as regular briefings. Director McCaffrey, himself,

has shown an incredible interest in this. He has given us a no fail

mission, and I think I can politely say that he is a demanding client, which I think is his responsibility in this case. I’ve never had

a client give us more scrutiny. He gets his staff to sit down, and

when we do things we have to prove to him and his staff that they

are going to work. We have to outline what the activity is, why we

are going to do it, how much it is going to cost. His staff reviews

it and they come back and ask us tough questions.

Sometimes we hope almost always—we have good answers for

those, and sometimes we’ve adjusted our activities due to their

oversight.

Mr. MICA. All right. Other than General McCaffrey and the contracting officer, who are the other individuals you’ve dealt with?

Mr. FRAZIER. Alan Levitt is the director of the media campaign.

I would say that people on our staff, between Bev and I, we talk

to him—including e-mails and phone calls probably in double digits

each day. We interface with him and his staff everyday on some

level or another. I think I’d probably be accurate in saying there

is not a day since we won this contract that we haven’t spoken

with him or his staff.

We actually function as a team with them and we work together

with them every day, as I referenced before.

Mr. MICA. And yours is the non-media——

Mr. FRAZIER. Non-advertising, yes.

Mr. MICA. And that would cover all of those aspects.

And who do you deal with as far as oversight? General McCaffrey and then a contracting officer, Ms. Seifert?

Ms. SEIFERT. Yes. It would be—— Mr. MICA. Could you tell us just who?

Ms. SEIFERT. The key contacts would be General McCaffrey—and

we’ve met, since we were appointed, which was January 4th of this

year, we’ve had 18 meetings with General McCaffrey. But, to give

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you some context, he talked earlier about being the CEO of his

campaign. There isn’t a CEO that Ogilvy & Mather works for anywhere in the globe that meets with his advertising agency every 2

weeks, and 18 meetings in 2 months is about once every 2 weeks,

so that’s the level of contact we’ve had with General McCaffrey.

And that isn’t, ‘‘Hello, how are you’’ in the hallway. That’s often 6,

7, 8-hour briefings on what we are doing. And he wasn’t kidding

when he said they go to 11 p.m.

So it is General McCaffrey. We are dealing on—— Mr. MICA. Contracting officer?

Ms. SEIFERT. The contracting officer, Rick Pleffner.

Mr. MICA. OK.

Ms. SEIFERT. Alan Levitt, the director of the media campaign;

and Alan’s staff, so Joe Bartholomew and Judy Costerman. And

Janet Chris, the chief of staff; and Poncho Kinney, and many others, as needed, depending on the issues. Also Don Vereen, the deputy director.

Mr. MICA. All right. Well, again, we appreciate your coming in

today. I am sure you never expected this level of scrutiny when you

got involved in this, but it is important that we make this campaign as effective as possible, that we ensure that every taxpayer

dollar is expended as efficiently and economically, that we do review these expenditures.

I am sure that both of your firms have tried to do an exemplary

job in this most important national campaign. It is the first of its

type. But we will continue to monitor these activities very closely,

because it is not a small-ticket item. It is $1 billion of our money

and we want it spent right, and it is combined with private sector

donations.

Ms. Cooper, thank you so much. You have been incredible, again,

turning tragedy into a public campaign, a private campaign to get

the word out not only in central Florida, across our State, and the

Nation today, and we thank you for your efforts, which were just

invaluable.

I don’t have any further questions at this time. I am sure you

are pleased to hear that. But we will be submitting additional written questions to our witnesses and the record will be open for 30

days.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MICA. With that, I thank you all for being with us.

We will excuse this panel and I will call our third and last panel.

Our third and last panel today is Doctor Lloyd Johnston, who is

the program director and university distinguished research scientist with the Institute for Social Research at the University of

Michigan.

We also have Dr. S. Shyam Sundar, and Dr. Sundar is director

of Media Effects Research Laboratory with the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University.

I am pleased that we have both of these distinguished panelists

with us today.

As you may have heard, gentlemen, this is an investigations and

oversight panel of Congress. We do ask that our witnesses be

sworn. If you would stand, please, and be sworn.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MICA. The witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Again, we are pleased to have such distinguished panelists to

give us their perspective on this unprecedented national media

campaign.

I will recognize first Dr. Lloyd Johnston, who is with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. You are recognized, sir, and welcome.

STATEMENTS OF LLOYD JOHNSTON, PROGRAM DIRECTOR

AND UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED RESEARCH SCIENTIST,

INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; AND S. SHYAM SUNDAR, DIRECTOR MEDIA EFFECTS

RESEARCH LABORATORY, COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATIONS,

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

Mr. JOHNSTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good

afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to testify.

I am going to be speaking from some of the figures that are attached to my testimony. I’ve just handed some to counsel, and

there are more on that desk.

Mr. MICA. What we would like to do, if it is OK, Dr. Johnston,

is, without objection, this information will be made part of the

record.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Thank you very much.

Mr. MICA. So ordered.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, I’ve been at the University of Michigan for

a long time, and for 25 years have directed the ongoing Monitoring

the Future studies of American adolescents and young adults, in

which we’ve tracked and tried to explain trends in drug use of all

kinds, as well as related beliefs and attitudes.

We have now done surveys of every graduating high school class

since 1975, and in the 1990’s we’ve also done surveys of 8th and

10th grade students, who go down in age to 13. So today we survey

about 50,000 young people a year in some 420 secondary schools.

In the short time available, I’d like to try to make several points,

and these are best illustrated in the handouts that I’ve given you,

or that are attached to my testimony.

The first is that we have found that drug use is malleable. It can

be influenced. It can change quite dramatically over time. Indeed,

it has over the last 25 or 30 years.

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We sometimes hear that this is a hopeless cause, the drug war

is lost, and so forth, and that’s so much hogwash.

Second, we have found—and I think this is one of the more important findings from our study—that the attitudes and beliefs that

young people have about these drugs have played a major role in

influencing the changes that have occurred, both the changes for

the good and the changes for the worse.

And if you look at figure 1, for example, it shows that the

changes in marijuana use are inversely related to changes in the

perceived risk of using marijuana.

So, as young people become more concerned about the dangers of

the drug, they become less likely to use. Or, in the 1990’s, as they

become less concerned, they become more likely to use.

We see a similar relationship, by the way, with disapproval,

which in the aggregate reflects peer norms about use.

These two variables have had a lot of explanatory power, and

sometimes have been leading indicators of change in use.

I should also mention in figures 1 and 2 that the trend lines on

perceived availability of these drugs suggest that availability has

not been a very good explanator of the changes that we’ve seen,

and I think that’s mostly because it is so very difficult to influence

availability when, in fact, there is a major and highly profitable

market constantly drawing suppliers in.

Now, I wanted to go to figure 3, which was referred to in testimony given earlier today, and it shows the PDFA estimates of

amount of resources that the media have contributed pro bono over

the years. We see there was a big increase in 1990, when there was

a major effort, and then a gradual decline over the 1990’s. As General McCaffrey said, competition in the media industry became

more severe. There was less pro bono support.

And you notice there is some correlation there over time between

the amount of advertising and the perceived risk that young people

reported—in this case, 12th grade students.

Now, to turn to a set of data that we have about ad campaigns,

specifically. We added these questions in 1987. We know, of course,

that the ad campaigns are aimed largely at affecting these very attitudes and beliefs that were shown to be important, and if you

look at figure 4 you can see that, based on data from 8th, 10th, and

12th grade students, recalled exposure to the ads can reach quite

high levels. When the media weight was heaviest, at the beginning

of the 1990’s, large proportions of these youngsters said that they

had at least weekly exposure, and a substantial number had daily

exposure to the ads.

Note that, as the weight of the ad effort declined in the 1990’s,

so did the reported exposure to the ads, helping to indicate that

these, indeed, are valid measures.

The point is it is possible to reach high levels of exposure, and

I should mention that a preliminary look at our 1999 data, which

are not yet ready for release, suggests that in the spring of 1999

we saw a sharp increase in reports of exposure, consistent with the

fact that the new campaign was getting underway.

Finally, in figure 5 I want to show that you can not only achieve

high rates of exposure, but high rates of impact as reported by the

youngsters. And here we’ve asked them to say to what extent they

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think such commercials have made them less likely to use drugs,

personally.

You can see that large proportions of them say that they feel the

commercials have, at least to some degree. In the early 1990’s, over

80 percent of the 8th graders said that. But the proportions who

reported such positive impact declined during the 1990’s, and this,

of course, was when the amount of media weight was, itself, declining. So, again, this is consistent with the notion that you have

more impact when you have more media coverage.

I want to conclude by saying that it is very important that we

institutionalize prevention of drug use for the long term in our society, and the media campaign is one way to do that. I think the primary other way is through prevention programs in the school.

The reason I say that is that when this country has gotten into

the most trouble is when we’ve taken our eye off the ball, and the

early 1990’s I think constituted an example of that.

Many institutions in society looked elsewhere. Drug use fell off

the television screen. I think a new generation of youngsters came

along who simply knew less about the consequences of drugs, either because they were exposed to less drug use around them or

because they heard less through the media and through tragedies

that were occurring to public figures.

So we, in a sense, got a more naive generation in the early 1990’s

because we weren’t dealing with the issues directly, and the Gulf

war I think was probably a precipitating event there, which

knocked everything off of the television screen in 1991 other than

the war. The drug issue didn’t come back for some years.

So I think that it is important that we institutionalize these

forms of education, socialization, and persuasion and keep them,

even in times when we’ve made substantial progress in reducing

drug use, because at precisely those times the seeds of a new epidemic can be sown. It is precisely those times, when the youngsters

know the least about drugs from first-hand observation, that they

need to know the most through formal learning.

I also have some comments on Dr. Sundar’s study, which he is

about to present, but I will leave those for questions.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnston follows:]

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Mr. MICA. We will now recognize Dr. Shyam Sundar, who is with

the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University.

Welcome. You are recognized, sir.

Dr. SUNDAR. I thank you for inviting me here this morning, this

afternoon, to give testimony regarding the potential psychological

effects of anti-drug messages in the media.

My comments today will center around the findings of the study

that was conducted with my Master’s student, Carson B. Wagner,

in spring of 1998. This preceded ONDCP’s campaign, but we believe our findings have some implications for current and future

media campaigns, in general.

Research has shown in the past that anti-drug ads and public

service announcements [PSAs], as they are called, are enormously

successful in reaching the intended target audiences. Research has

also shown that they promote anti-drug attitudes among our youth.

But it is in the area of behaviors that we see a lot of controversy

in the literature, especially some researchers saying that behaviors

do not automatically follow from attitudes, and so forth.

So we decided to look at behavioral indicators in our research. In

particular, we looked at behavioral intention, or what is sometimes

called ‘‘conation.’’

The variable that we found most intriguing in our research is the

variable that is called conative curiosity. We conducted a very simple experiment involving 65 high school seniors as participants in

one of two conditions. Participants in the control condition saw an

unaltered version of a prime time television program, complete

with commercial breaks, while those in the experimental condition

saw the same program but with four anti-drug PSAs edited into

the commercial breaks.

Following the program, participants in both conditions filled out

an identical questionnaire containing, among other things, five

items that elicited their level of curiosity toward illicit drugs, items

like it might be interesting to try marijuana, using marijuana

might be fun, and so forth. We found that the participants in the

condition where they were exposed to PSAs expressed significantly

greater curiosity than their counterparts in the control condition.

But these results should be viewed with extreme caution and skepticism; and one of the main reasons I am here is because this particular piece of research is getting more attention in the media

than it perhaps deserves, simply because of its counterintuitive results.

I have to mention a number of caveats that go with studies of

this sort. It is a study that uses a small sample in a controlled setting. And, while these kinds of experiments are similar to test tube

experiments in chemistry and can demonstrate causation between

variables, it would be premature to generalize their findings to the

real world without extensive further study.

My co-investigator, Carson Wagner, replicated this experiment in

a different State using different participants and a different sample

of PSAs and found similar results, but, really, other researchers

with different samples in different locations need to replicate the

study before we can even begin to think of this as a robust effect

of anti-drug PSAs.

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So our research really raises more questions than it answers, and

this is an exploratory piece of research which has brought to the

fore an unintended consequence of PSAs—namely, that of arousing

curiosity—and our data are not able to specify exactly why.

We do discuss a number of possibilities in the paper that we presented in a peer forum earlier this year, but these are all merely

speculative at this point. Others have suggested that this might be

an example of the forbidden fruit effect, that is the tendency among

adolescents to be drawn toward that which is forbidden or taboo.

But only future research can explore these possibilities.

So by presenting our findings we are not claiming that curiosity

is the only outcome of anti-drug PSAs. This just happens to be the

variable we examined. There could be many other variables that

indicate positive outcomes, as other researchers have shown, and

they may have far greater beneficial effects on our youth than the

potential negative consequences of arousing curiosity.

We are certainly not recommending that national anti-drug

media campaigns be abandoned, as has been incorrectly implied in

certain media reports of our study. If anything, we are very interested in ensuring that such campaigns achieve the intended pro-social effects by minimizing the potential, if any, to have unintended

negative consequences.

In conclusion, our research has implications, I think, in two

broad areas of anti-drug media campaigns, and those would be

message design and evaluation.

Since our findings raise the possibility that a mere mention of

drugs can serve to prime audience members to think about drugs

when it wasn’t there before, an immediate suggestion would be to

perhaps design PSAs that provide our youngsters with examples of

alternative activities that are healthy and can take the place of

drugs in their lives, but without mentioning the word ‘‘drugs’’ anywhere.

Another implication might be perhaps a move away from the fear

appeal kind of ads, the frying pan or the brain-on-drugs kind of

messages, which are powerful in their attention-getting abilities

and their recall rates, but which might trigger curiosity, because

those are the kinds of ads we primarily used in our experiments;

and we don’t know if the curiosity effect is specific to that kind of

an appeal.

There are certainly other health communication models, like the

health belief model and so forth, which can result in message designs that are very different from the fear appeal design, and they

can result in different types of message elaboration in the minds

of viewers, leading perhaps to more desirable behaviors.

Our study also, I think, has some implications for evaluation research. In particular, it demonstrates the need for controlled laboratory and field experimentation in order to isolate outcome variables, such as curiosity, because the larger implication is that it

calls for more research on the effects of PSAs in particular, not just

PSA campaigns in general. Of course, there are lots of studies, including the one that was presented just before mine, that look at

the whole campaign, in general, and these are large sample surveys and have very useful correlational data to present.

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Small sample experiments, on the other hand, can ensure exposure and measure effects in a controlled fashion, but, of course,

they lack generalizability.

So both have their pros and cons. Ideally, I would like to see a

combination of surveys and experiments used to evaluate the overall effectiveness of anti-drug media campaigns.

I thank you again for inviting me to testify here, and I really appreciate this opportunity to discuss some of the theoretical and

methodological issues concerning media effects of anti-drug campaign information.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Sundar follows:]

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Mr. MICA. I have several questions.

First of all, Dr. Johnston, I guess you have been—the University

of Michigan has been conducting this monitoring work since—is it

1987?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Since 1975.

Mr. MICA. Since 1975?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Oh, yes, 1975 I see on one of these charts. You do not

have a specific subcontract with ONDCP or with NIDA to deal with

this current campaign, do you?

Mr. JOHNSTON. No, not at all. Actually, we, ourselves, chose to

put in the questions about the media campaign when we learned

that the partnership effort was being launched in 1987. And, as

we’ve done with other historical developments that we thought

might influence young people’s drug use, we wanted to see what we

could learn about that.

Frankly, the results came out much more favorably than I ever

expected, given that I think youngsters probably have a bias

against admitting that anybody influences them, most particularly

those who are trying to. And so I thought the results were really

quite impressive.

In any case, to answer your question directly, we have no contract. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is the sponsor of our

work.

Mr. MICA. Right.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Its a competing, investigator-initiated research

grant that competes with all the other NIH applications that go to

NIDA.

Mr. MICA. I think NIDA has contracted specifically with Westat.

Are you aware of their work?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Have you seen what they have produced?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, I think they are still in the early stages,

but I have seen some of the thinking that has gone into it, and it

seems to me it is being well done.

Mr. MICA. And it will take some time before we can see what

they’ve produced, and also compare it with what you produced.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Right.

Mr. MICA. Do you think there’s any overlap, or have they consulted with you at all in what you——

Mr. JOHNSTON. I served on their Advisory Committee. I don’t

know if it is an ongoing committee or not, but we met once, in any

case, and they probably had 15 or 20 people.

They are going into considerably more detail. This is a study

which is aimed directly at assessing the impact of the media campaign, and also trying to measure some of the other cultural influences, partly at my suggestion, actually, such as media portrayals

in entertainment content that might also be important determinants that could be confused with what is going on in terms of

the ad campaign.

And they are also looking in much more detail at specific ads, recall of specific ads, and so forth.

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Our measurement is really quite limited on this specific question,

but, of course, we can tie it to a lot of other things, as I’ve indicated.

Mr. MICA. Your charts and your submissions are most interesting, detailing some of the trends. In the first figure you show the

12th graders’ perceived risk of regular use and prevalence of use

in the past 30 days—pretty dramatic figures from 1992.

I guess we closed down basically the drug czar’s office, cut the

staff dramatically. We had a Surgeon General who sort of sent a,

‘‘Just say maybe,’’ marijuana message out and slashed a number of

the other programs, and we see a dramatic increase in use and a

decrease in the perception of risk. So all of those things sort of collided.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes. And, if I may, between 1991 and 1992—and

these are taken in the spring—there was a decline in perceived

risk, and that actually preceded the turn around in use by a year,

so in that case it was a leading indicator of things to come.

It’s not too often in social science that we get leading indicators

like that, and it corresponds pretty well to what I was mentioning

about the Gulf war, which was in 1991.

Mr. MICA. I notice you have marijuana here and we have cocaine.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Is there also a—do you produce a chart on heroin?

Mr. JOHNSTON. We have charts on virtually all the drugs. I just

didn’t——

Mr. MICA. I wonder if you could provide us one with heroin.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Certainly.

Mr. MICA. I think that that would be—I’d like to have that as

part of the record.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Absolutely.

Mr. MICA. Are you now into methamphetamine, ecstacy, or any

other drugs?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes. We have data on crystal methamphetamine,

and I think we have something like 32 classes and subclasses of

drugs, altogether.

Mr. MICA. Well, we could get into too many.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.

Mr. MICA. But in the major problem categories, if there is anything else you could provide us with as far as these charts, I think

it would be helpful.

We also heard—I don’t want to say some controversial testimony,

but some testimony from Mr. Sundar that, in preventing drug use,

his study may indicate that—and I think he says we may raise curiosity in there by increased possible drug use or abuse.

What is your assessment of his preliminary study?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, I was glad that he put it as preliminary

and suggestive. One of the advantages of master’s dissertations is

that they can generate some very interesting hypotheses that can

lead to some important findings, but they often don’t have the resources to do a very appropriate design, and I think the research

design wasn’t really up to testing these hypotheses.

I did, however, have some runs done yesterday on a large sample

and tested one of the two hypotheses, that increased ad exposure

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increases the perception of a number of youngsters in the surrounding environment who use drugs.

That would be an important finding, if true, and I ran that correlation in our 1998 eighth grade sample, which is about 2,500

cases on that particular questionaire form. I then replicated it on

the 10th grade sample, and in both cases it yielded a 0.00 correlation.

So, when put to a high-powered test, the one hypothesis failed.

And I would be very cautious about concluding that the other hypothesis is true, as well, unless, as you suggest, further research

supports that.

The problem with the design was that there were only three

classrooms of kids. One of them got the treatment and two didn’t.

But we don’t know whether that one classroom was different to

begin with because there was never a pre-measure of these variables. It was only an after-the-fact measure. And so you have what

we call very, very low analytic power in that condition, and it is

very easy to confuse what was really a preselection bias with some

kind of an outcome.

Dr. SUNDAR. The only thing I would add to that is, in the replication, we did a better job of random assignment, which we could not

do in the initial study. But I agree with you. I mean, really, we

need to replicate this in very many different locations and larger

samples for us to even begin to conclude about the curiosity effect.

But this is something for which we haven’t come up with an alternative explanation, so we put it out there in an international

conference, which then got picked up by the media. So far, nobody

has suggested why there might be these higher scores on curiosity

as a function of watching this.

Mr. MICA. I have one final question, and we have a vote that is

pending, so we may have additional questions to submit to you, but

Congress embarked on this aggressive campaign. We also, as you

heard, put a number of dos and don’ts in the legislative mandate.

But one thing that we did—and wisely, I think—was to require

evaluation. We are spending, I think, $40-some million, about $10

million a year for evaluation. That is being subcontracted now

through NIDA, I believe, most of it, and Westat, another subcontract.

But we set in motion this program, and then an evaluation, and

then it has now filtered its way down.

One, do you feel that it is adequate? Two, do you feel—I mean,

whether you are limited or extensive knowledge, I am not sure, of

what we are doing. Would you advise Congress that this is the way

to proceed and we are on target or off base, or what? Dr. Johnson,

and then Dr. Sundar.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, as I said, I think it is a very well-designed

piece of work and being very thoughtfully done with very broad

input.

This is tough stuff because we are trying to look at something

that is happening in the natural environment when all sorts of

other things are happening, but I think that the people doing the

research are aware of that complexity and of course, the first step

to solving a problem is to be aware of it.

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If I had my ’druthers, it would have been nice if the survey could

have had the first iteration before any national campaign at the

Federal level was launched, but that’s hindsight, because now you

have the limitation that you are already midway and you already

have a measurement, so you keep going.

But I think, given the limitations of reality, that a good job is

being done, and I don’t really have any suggestions for change.

Mr. MICA. Dr. Sundar.

Dr. SUNDAR. In general, we are—at least my co-author and I are

very interested in making sure that any type of campaign, be it

this one or any anti-drug or any other health communication campaign, has the desired consequences. And, to the extent this media

campaign comes up with evaluation research or data to indicate

that it has the desired consequences and not so many of the unintended ones, one of which came out in our study quite accidentally,

then I would be able to make a better statement on that.

But at this time, as far as the PSAs go, we are seeing much better diversity of PSAs. It’s not so much fear appeals, as was in earlier years. We are seeing different types of target of PSAs.

We have been studying some of the recent crop of ads, and they

all seem to fall into some of the other models other than fear appeals, and we are pleased to see that. But we would be very, very

interested in seeing what consequences occur as a result, and how

the research turns out, how the evaluation turns out.

Mr. MICA. One of the other interesting phenomena—and my time

is about up because we have this vote—is Mr. Cummings, maybe

you heard him earlier, talked about the increase in use of illegal

narcotics among minorities—African Americans, and Ms. RosLehtinen, the Hispanics, and we’ve seen that increase.

You don’t have time to respond now, because I am going to have

to run, but I’d be interested in any of your observations about that

and how we might approach that and how we could monitor that

and evaluate success in that area, particularly reaching those targeted constituencies.

I thank both of you for coming before us today. Unfortunately,

our time has expired for the committee hearing.

There being no further business to come before this subcommittee, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 1:49 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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