Ads Spread Date-Rape Drug Warning

With spring break quickly approaching, officials are launching an aggressive campaign to warn young women about the proliferation of date-rape drugs on the local party scene.

“Rapists are no longer just using guns and knives,” said county Supervisor Pam Slater. “They’re now using stealth weapons, and those stealth weapons are drugs.”

With its beaches, sunny weather and swinging nightspots, San Diego is a mecca for tens of thousands of college students during spring break and summer vacation. Each year police receive reports from women who say they have been sexually abused after a night of partying.

Of all categories of violent crime, only rape is increasing in San Diego County. The number of rapes has gone up 7% since 1995 while violent crime overall has plunged more than 20%, according to annual crime statistics.

Officials are concerned that women in San Diego are more vulnerable to date-rape drugs than women in other parts of the country because such illicit drugs are easily and cheaply available in nearby Mexico. Even though it is illegal to bring such substances into this country, smuggling flourishes.

Often odorless and tasteless, date-rape drugs are powerful tranquilizers that can be dropped into the drinks of unsuspecting women, rendering them incapable of resisting.

If the woman has been drinking, the drug can be even more powerful, resulting in blackouts and lack of memory of the assault.

With the victim unable to remember what happened, prosecutors frequently don’t file charges in date-rape cases. Also, date-rape drugs flush from the system rapidly and cannot be detected by toxicology tests.

The $100,000 prevention effort, sponsored by the county Board of Supervisors and the district attorney’s office, will include billboards, bumper stickers, television and radio advertising, posters and brochures at local campuses and announcements at a concert starring Enrique Iglesias, Sugar Ray and Macy Gray. Nightspots, particularly those in beach communities, are also being asked to post warnings for their female customers.

“We would much rather prevent a rape than prosecute a rapist,” Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst said at a news conference Friday at San Diego State University.

While there have been other anti-rape campaigns, notably a nationwide effort launched by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in Santa Monica two years ago, this one adds a new theme: that young women should protect each other, particularly when they go out partying.

The television ads are being placed in shows with a high percentage of women viewers between 14 and 25 years old, including daytime soap operas and nighttime dramas such as “Dawson’s Creek” and “Party of Five.”

In one of the ads, Shannon MacMillan, a member of the U.S. soccer team, which won the 1999 Women’s World Cup, talks of the value of teamwork on the soccer field and then translates the lesson to everyday life: “If a friend has too much to drink or can’t take care of herself, help her, before somebody hurts her.”

In another ad, an unidentified young woman, talking of a real-life experience, says her friend “was so drunk she didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. . . . I should have been a better friend.”

The third ad is aimed at convincing men that having sex with a woman who is drunk or unconscious or too woozy to give consent is rape.

“Men are taught that it’s OK to ‘get it’ any way they can,” said Mary Susan Sterner, an official with the local chapter of the National Organization for Women. “That’s the mind-set we have to change.”

Local statistics show that 80% of rape victims know their attackers, and in 60% to 70% of the cases drugs, alcohol or both are involved. Sixty percent of victims are between 14 and 26 years old.

A former San Diego State football star recently pleaded guilty to charges that he smuggled steroids and the date-rape drug clonazepam from Mexico for several years to sell to fellow students.

Nationwide, rape prevention activists have said that date-rape drugs, also called club drugs or rave drugs, have led to an epidemic of sexual assaults.

In February, President Clinton signed a bill toughening federal laws against possession and distribution of the drug GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate, which has been linked to at least 58 deaths since 1990. The bill was pushed by the Michigan congressional delegation after a 15-year-old girl in Detroit died after drinking a soda laced with GHB at a party.

Last week, four young men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 15 years in the Detroit case. Like several other drugs, GHB, often called liquid ecstasy, is easily concocted.