The Anti-Drug Lord

Words By Corey Binns
Photos By Jen Dessinger

Outside a convenience store, a teenage girl makes an offer to an intimidating group of men: "You can do anything you want to me for 50 bucks." When one of them asks about her younger sister, standing nearby, she offers her up too. The men shuttle the girls, covered in scars, into a grungy bathroom. A voice-over confirms what many teens watching the television ad already know: "This isn't normal, but on meth it is."

Earlier this year, a series of such ads began airing in Illinois and Idaho, where the highly addictive drug has ravaged communities, crippling state budgets in the process. To stop the addiction cycle, billionaire software developer Tom Siebel (of Siebel Systems) has used his business savvy to create and promote the Meth Project--an anti-methamphetamine organization that targets first-time users. The organization aggressively preaches to young people with graphic portrayals of addiction on billboards, radio, and television.

Siebel, 55, borrowed the advertising concept from the American Cancer Society's successful "Truth" antismoking campaign, and his Meth Project ads go well beyond the classic "your brain on drugs" tagline. The spots offer a snapshot of meth addiction at its worst: a son attacking his mother; a boyfriend selling his girlfriend for drugs; a boy hallucinating that bugs are crawling on his skin; and the transformation of a pretty girl into one with skin sores and tooth decay. "We're really focused on realism," says Siebel. "That's exactly the way addicts look." With the slogan "Not Even Once," the campaign targets teens who haven't yet tried the drug.

The Meth Project first focused on Montana, where Siebel owns a cattle ranch. During trips to the state, he has watched the meth problem spiral into an epidemic. "It's palpable, visible, and very tragic," he says. Three years ago, more than half the children in Montana's foster-care system and more than half the prisoners in the state's jails were there because of methamphetamine, costing the state approximately $60 million a year. "The state's primary response was to increase prison sentencing," says Siebel. "That didn't strike me as making much of a difference in a positive sense."

Since the ads began airing in Montana in September, 2005, meth use among the state's teens has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to a recent survey by Montana's attorney general. In state-funded facilities, admissions for meth rehab have fallen by 42 percent among patients 20 years old and under, and meth-related crime has dropped by 62 percent. In three years, Montana has gone from fifth to 39th in the national ranking of methamphetamine abuse.

In addition to consulting with consumer-marketing experts, law enforcement authorities, focus groups, and award-winning directors, Siebel asks his four children, ages 9 to 19, for input on the campaigns. "These messages are in the same tone and color and frequency of what kids experience all day, he says. "For 16-year-olds, this is normal stuff." The ads are so stylized that they've made AdCritic's Top 10 list of best ads in the United States and won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival. The Office of National Drug Control Policy awarded the program a White House commendation as the most influential prevention campaign in 2006. Last fall, Siebel testified before the Senate and Congress on the effectiveness of his program and asked for support to expand nationwide.

To date, the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation has contributed $26 million to the Meth Project, making it the largest advertiser in Montana. A 2008 survey commissioned by the Montana Meth Project found that the ads were recognized by 88 percent of the state's teens, and two-thirds of teens reported seeing or hearing anti-meth messages weekly. Now, Siebel says, "We're in the franchising business." The advertisements have recently appeared beyond Montana's borders, in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, and Wyoming, and Siebel is taking a hard look at bringing the ads to more states soon, including Georgia, South Carolina, and the Dakotas, all states with large meth problems. As Siebel says, "The only difference between Montana and other states is the Meth Project."

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Comments

[EnragedLiberal]

Just remember that Nixon's war on drugs really was nothing more than an attempt to gain some control over the youth, who were giving him fits with their resistance to the Vietnam war. And so today we have a failed policy which does nothing but buttress a bloated Criminal Justice system which employs the stupid but otherwise takes money away from every possible positive aspect of society. America is staggering under the weight of a Criminal Justice system that does little if anything to ensure total safety because safety is ensured by providing as many people as possible with productive opportunities and the pursuit of happiness, not by threatening to lock them up. Half of the prisoners in the world are in our prisoners. Imagine how much wealthier we'd be if they were working instead of languishing in a hotel room of sorts. 90% of the poor saps in county level internment are there for stupid shit like selling marijuana or disorderly conduct. And 80 or 90% of those prisoners seem to be black, at least in my state. I've known too many blacks to believe that so many young black men are that evil.

[EnragedLiberal]

Meth is the greatest advertisement for making hemp legal. Although MJ is not considered by reasoned researchers to actually be a gateway drug to any great degree, to the extent that an MJ user could possibly be tempted to use Meth, apparently a powerfully addictive and physically wasting drug ( I used it casually a couple of hundred times over 30 years ago, so I guess I don't have that addiction gene to anything but chicken parm and seafood) we should attempt to remove access to illegal pathways by making cannabis a regulated commodity. The most benefit would come, besides a wonderful program like this guy is running, from shutting down the Mexican trucking that transmits truckloads between Mexico and the US without any kind of examination of what those loads contain. Obviously, they contain Meth, Coke, designer pills, and who knows what else. Duh!

[midtown]

Smart post.

[takingbkourcountry]

But what people need to learn is that Meth DOES change the way your brain functions. This is something that people don't realise that they are doing to themselves. I guess It does'nt matter too much, if your willing to trash your life anyway. But think it over...years of chronic depression, possible metabolic disorders- go ahead and be a guinea pig .

[wadenelson1]

Tom Seibel, THANK YOU.
Your efforts are going to save a certain number of lives.
You could have built the world's biggest sailboat, but instead you're helping people. Thank you.

[desthmoneses]

These campaigns are fine and good, but I don't they would wor in a state like California which have the biggest meth rates behind Oregon and Montana. Drugs are entrenched here, a third of Californians regularly use controlled substances and more than half have tried them. Everyone I know is an addict, to pills, pot, alchohol, meth, coke, and heroin. Everyone in my family is a user of some substance, myself included. I don't really see what the big deal is, all of us are law abiding tax paying citizens that have never hurt another with our addiction, why should we be imprisoned for our addiction, it only hurts us and weve made peace with that. Were all hard working college educated individuals who really are quite harmless. If we were violent or accidently hitting people in our cars while under the influence then fine throw the book at us, but otherwise what we do with our bodies is quite frankly out of the governments control no matter what laws they pass, and here in California the laws are getting more lax not stricter.

[hominidx]

They help some people. They won't solve the problem. I agree with you on policy and laws, punishment vs. treatment, but am still in favor of real education to the real dangers (not the "smoke pot and become a killer!" BS) of some drugs.
Meth being a prime example.

[desthmoneses]

That's all fine and good, these campaigns will suburban kids from trying substances they never really wanted to try in the first place. But for the majority of users the first person they get high or loaded with is their parent or sibling. I know my first experience was with my older brother and his first experience was with my mom, who was a kindergarten teacher incidentally. If you think groups of people who are perfectly o.k. with drugs and give them to there kids will be affected by a commercial campaign, think again. Whether you acnwoledge it or not theres a huge rastafarianesque culture in Southern California and many other places, and as long as the poppy fields in Afganistan are allowed by the U.S. and pharmecutical companies are still pumping out easy to get feel good pills we will remain, no education will change that. If I could tell you how many people told me they would never try a drug and did less than a year later it would blow your mind. Educating campaigns will wear off eventually.

[comebackid]

Look, the real drug dealers in this country are those above the law.

Like Joseph Kennedy was and illegal booze smuggler tho officials in Washington Reagan, North, Clinton Bush and many more are the guilty ones. Here is but one account of the reality of drugs dealing in America:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8681225708920427234

[Michale32086]

Sorry, I am an old school cop..

Once you start down the road of motivations and other carp, where do you stop?

"Why do people rob other people?"

Why do people murder other people?"

Who cares!?

The reasons are irrelevant. It's a crime, pure and simple..

Michale.....

[BusGreg]

And so the bull continues! PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK! Yes, meth is bad shit, no argument here. That does not change the fact that the war on drugs as it has been conducted is a failure. Has been ever since it was started in 1914! And yes I do think what this campaign is doing is great, but the war on drugs as a whole is a failure. It is based on lies, especially when it comes to pot, and as long as you lie about one aspect of drug use and abuse the rest of your arguments are and will continue to be suspect.
"The reasons are irrelevant. It's a crime, pure and simple." this statement shows clearly the arrogance and unwillingness for open debate on the side of many in law enfarcement. Maybe a quick visit to the following website will shed some light on how another segment in Law Enforcement thinks about the war on drugs.
http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

[Michale32086]

The argument that "it's too tough to enforce so why not just make it legal" is fraught with so many pitfalls as to be completely unwieldy.

Surely that reasoning is akin to capitulation and surrender..

"Hell, it's too tough to combat terrorism... Let's just legalize it and put all the saved money into "social programs" that will eliminate the problem overnight!"

Yea right... And monkees fly outta my butt too..

Just because current actions are showing MIXED results, doesn't mean that legalization is the answer...

The program mentioned in this commentary is a perfect example of how to conduct things..

Surely you are not advocating making meth perfectly legal, in the face of the success of this program.. Are you?

Michale.....

[mcthfg]

You're missing the main point - why do people take drugs?

How about legalizing everything, taxing drugs, and using that money for social programs and education so people won't want to take drugs. Meth is a symptom, not the problem.

How amazingly sad that we're into our 3rd or 4th decade on the "war on drugs" and this is the best we can do.

[BusGreg]

That is the only way we will ever controll drugs. After all we have to do is look at alcohol prohibition. It gave rise to organized crime, and rather than druglords like the late Pablo Escobar, we had "liquor" lords like the late Albert Capone. Prohibition didn't work then, it will not work now. As long as we continue to have knee jerk reactions at the ballot box based on fears and lies from the "wrong" wing propaganda machine billions of dollars will continue to be wasted. As long as we as a nation are willing to fund the ridiculous warehousing of people with a medical condition called ADDICTION in jails and prisons rather than treating the underlying cause, all we do is continue in a non winnable direction.

[Michale32086]

Speaking as a former LEO, it's nice to see a successful battle in the war against drugs..

Michale.....

[BusGreg]

Yet when it comes to marijuana the lies are being continued at nauseam. Since Nixon's refusal to implement suggestions made in the famous Shaffer report the war against marijuana has at some estimates wasted close to half a trillion dollars because the lies are being perpetuated. Will people believe that meth is bad? I hope so! ....but then there was the boy who cried wolf.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/duapip/pipmenu.htm

[rini]

Yeah, the idea that all illegal drugs are the same and that alcohol is different is based on a lack of knowledge.

Our current laws are based on emotion, tradition and accidents of history.