Hollywood Gets a Drug Exhortation

National drug czar William J. Bennett made an unusual pitch to Hollywood’s entertainment leaders on Monday to join the war on narcotics, dramatically comparing drug abuse in Los Angeles to the destruction of the Northern California earthquake.

“We’ve all been seeing the newscasts about the earthquake, the epicenter up in San Jose,” Bennett said. “This area, Los Angeles, may be the epicenter of a disaster inflicted by man on man.

“I’m sure many of you in this audience have seen the toll on many individuals,” Bennett, President Bush’s policy director for drug enforcement, told about 400 members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, including the presidents and top executives of all three major networks and several top TV production companies.

“There are some communities in America today that are literally getting the hell pounded out of them from (the) aftershocks.”

Bennett appeared to be referring to widespread reports that problems related to illicit drugs are now being experienced in big cities, suburbs and farm towns alike across the country.

In the brief luncheon speech at the Beverly Hilton hotel, Bennett praised the television industry for eliminating much of the “glamorizing” of drug abuse.

He challenged the industry to get the anti-drug message to trouble spots in the inner-cities, and he criticized some anti-drug campaigns that feature actors or professional athletes touting their own victories over substance abuse. Such campaigns, Bennett said, send the wrong message--that youngsters, too, can become hooked on drugs and eventually conquer the problem.

“That’s a very risky message,” he said. “We need to pair those (examples) with examples of people who don’t recover. Kids need to see more burnout cases” in televised anti-drug messages.

Bennett stressed the seriousness of the drug problem in the inner cities, the schools and in communities where increasing numbers of babies are being born with cocaine addictions. He also met privately after the speech with a handful of top-ranking TV executives, a session that lasted about half an hour.

But, even in the closed session, he stopped short of recommending any specific plan of action for Hollywood, leaving some listeners disappointed.

“I was basically looking for him to give some guidelines or the format for a show, or even slap us on the wrist a bit for glorifying drugs,” said Jim Moore, television advertising coordinator for the Hollywood Reporter.

Vince Di Persio, an independent filmmaker who has done a documentary on the crack cocaine problem among youngsters in Palm Beach County, Fla., complained that Bennett’s emphasis on the inner-city seemed misguided.

“It’s outdated rhetoric,” said Di Persio, whose documentary, “Crack USA: County Under Siege,” is scheduled to air on Home Box Office on Nov. 10. Di Persio said his 45-minute film will illustrate that even teen-agers in middle- and upper-class area are suffering greatly from crack addiction.

“In Palm Beach County, I found . . . that kids from good schools and good families were falling into crack,” he said. “There was crack everywhere.”

But Richard Frank, president of Walt Disney Studios and founder of the academy’s 3-year-old campaign against drug abuse, said Bennett’s purpose was mostly to be “a cheerleader and encourage us to do more.” Frank said television executives are already developing a plan of action that will become more visible in coming months.

“We have made strides,” Frank said. “Hollywood has cleaned up its act. The best thing (Bennett) did was focus attention on the issue again.”

Frank, who invited Bennett to the luncheon, said the academy is putting together a half-hour, animated anti-drug cartoon that is expected to air on more than 750 television stations early next year in the United States and Canada.

All three networks plan to show the children’s program one Saturday morning in February or March, said Jim Loper, the academy’s executive director. Independent stations will also air the program, and more than 300,000 videocassettes will later be distributed to schools and libraries, he said.

“The story line is still being worked out,” Loper said, but cartoon characters popular with children will be featured. McDonald’s and the Ronald McDonald Foundation, the 3-M Co. and Disney underwrote the $1-million project, for which animation houses donated their services, Loper said.

While Bennett was speaking, about 30 people who identified themselves as members of the Libertarian Party demonstrated peacefully against the President’s war on drugs outside the hotel.

The participants--saying drug-related crimes would be eliminated by making drugs legal and avialable by prescription or on the free market--carried signs with such messages as “Let Them Smoke Pot” and “Pro-Choice on Everything.”