Senator Assails Anti-Tobacco Ad Deal

The White House anti-drug office has come under attack from a Republican senator and anti-smoking groups for awarding a multimillion-dollar advertising contract to a company that handles publicity for a major tobacco company.

Bates USA works for one of tobacco company Brown and Williamson’s leading cigarette brands--Lucky Strike--and, according to industry sources, has just won accounts worth $50 million to advertise the company’s Kool and Capri brands.

“It is inconceivable to me that the Office of National Drug Control Policy has disbursed millions of tax dollars for marketing efforts to deter our nation’s children from using illicit drugs, including tobacco, to an agency which represents one of the largest tobacco companies, Brown and Williamson,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a letter to Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

McCain said in an interview that Bates USA has “made a lot of money off of placing ads that kept kids smoking. This is in direct contradiction to what the government is trying to do--it’s hypocrisy.”

McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was the lead sponsor of a Senate bill designed to reduce smoking by young people. Tobacco companies spent more than $40 million on advertising that opposed the legislation, which died earlier this year.

Officials in McCaffrey’s office and at Bates said the situation is not as clear-cut as it may appear. Under federal procurement rules, they said, the government cannot limit bidding to companies that eschew tobacco clients.

Furthermore, they said, Bates will only be buying advertising time and space for the government’s anti-drug ads. Creation of the ads and the overall advertising strategy is the job of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and a panel of medical and educational experts.

“There’s no legal way that the government could preclude any vendor from bidding on this,” said Alan Levitt, director of the national youth anti-drug media campaign.

And since Bates does not design the ads, there is no conflict of interest, he said, adding that, although the drug policy office works to discourage drug use of all kinds, for the moment, its ad campaign is focused exclusively on illegal drugs.

“We are very happy and very pleased with their work,” Levitt added.

The drug policy office is just finishing the first year of a five-year, $1-billion program of anti-drug advertising. For placing the ads for one year, Bates will be paid about 10% of the $120 million cost of the ads it handles.

The office is reviewing bids from several major advertising agencies to handle the job for the remaining four years of the anti-drug campaign, which would involve a contract worth about $700 million. Bates is one of several firms in the running, according to industry sources.

Mark Morris, chairman of Bates North America, said he sees no conflict in representing both Brown and Williamson and the federal government’s campaign.

“There’s nothing illegal about selling alcohol and tobacco to adults and we’ve been engaged by a tobacco company to promote their brand. . . “ he said. “There’s no conflict in our ability to do that and participate in the government’s contract.”

Although Morris noted that his company is not doing creative work for the government campaign and that the ads focus on illegal drugs, some anti-smoking advocates were not impressed. To avoid the appearance of a conflict, they said, government agencies that regulate tobacco in Florida and California require that the advertising firms and media buyers who bid for their anti-tobacco work not be employed by tobacco industry clients.

“You can’t serve two masters,” said Colleen Stevens, who manages California’s $25-million anti-tobacco ad campaign. California prohibits companies that bid for the work from “having accounts with tobacco products specifically or subsidiaries of tobacco products,” she said.