NEW YORK, January 2, 2007 – The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign (NYADMC) has come under criticism because of a GAO report endorsing Westat’s evaluation of the Campaign.

Westat, Inc., a research company based in Washington, D.C., conducted a survey of the NYADMC from November, 1999 (over a year after Campaign advertising had begun) until June of 2004. Their primary objective was to determine if exposure to Campaign advertising caused teens to reduce their initiation of drug use (especially marijuana), or caused parents to initiate or increase positive parenting behaviors, controlling for all other factors.

Westat found that over the period of their survey, NYADMC advertising caused no favorable changes in teen drug use, and may have caused some teens to initiate marijuana use. They found evidence for a slight favorable effect on parent attitudes and behaviors.

We believe that Westat’s survey of the NYADMC is fundamentally flawed for two basic reasons:

1. Westat sought to establish a pure “cause-and-effect” relationship between exposure to advertising and behavioral outcomes, controlling for all other factors.

This ignores the reality that advertising –whether for toothpaste, automobiles or the choice to be drug-free—works in concert with other factors, not independently. In the case of commercial goods and services, these other factors may include price, packaging, distribution, or what you’ve heard from your neighbor. In the case of a teenager’s choice to be drug free, it may include what he’s learned from his parents, from school drug programs, from popular culture or from his peers.

Private sector marketers recognize this reality, and strive to establish that their advertising campaigns are associated, or correlated with increases in sales, and with positive consumer attitudes towards their products. They don’t expect —or try—to isolate a direct cause-and-effect relationship between advertising exposure and sales increases, controlling for all other influences.

In contrast, Westat claimed to control for all other influences via the use of an experimental technique known as “propensity scoring.” When first used by Westat, propensity scoring was not widely used outside of biomedical research. While the technique is now more widely used, it is still considered to be a new tool and one that has not been used to evaluate media campaigns. While the methodology is certainly worthy of experimental research with media campaigns, the National Campaign should not be used to experiment with new statistical methods.

Virtually all major national drug surveys, including the University of Michigan’s “Monitoring the Future” study and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, show teen drug use declining over the life of the NYADMC, including the period studied by Westat. From 2001 to 2006, teen use of illicit drugs declined by 25%, according to “Monitoring the Future.” So judged by the standards of most major private sector marketers, NYADMC advertising has been associated with significant and sustained declines in drug use by American teens.

2. Even if a direct cause-and-effect relationship between advertising exposure and behavioral outcomes could be isolated, Westat wasn’t in a position to isolate it.

Because Westat could not implement a quasi-experimental design (comparing teens who were exposed to advertising with teens who had not been exposed), they attempted to determine Campaign advertising effects by comparing teens who self-reported low exposure to ads with teens who self-reported higher exposure to ads. While this method can be used to show associations or correlations between exposure and attitudes/behavior it cannot be used to conclude that the ads were solely responsible for those teens’ subsequent behavior.

(In contrast, the authoritative study on the “truth” teen anti-smoking campaign compared the smoking behavior of teens in areas receiving heavy advertising activity with that of teens in low-activity areas, using data from “Monitoring the Future.” The study showed a correlation between high spend media support for the “truth” campaign and lower levels of teen smoking.)

The Westat survey concluded three years ago, in 2004, and since then the NYADMC has continued to contribute to significant reductions in American teens’ use of illegal drugs. As recently as this year, findings published in the American Journal of Public Health pointed to a strong relationship between exposure to Campaign advertising and significant declines in marijuana use observed in a study fielded by the University of Kentucky.

The Partnership continues to work with ONDCP and with advertising and marketing experts all over the United States who have no doubt that the Campaign is making a critical contribution to our mission of reducing illicit drug use in America.