In the late 1990s, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which was established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, made a deal with multiple TV networks to include anti-drug messaging in show plots. According to reporting by the New York Times and Salon in 2000, the roots of the deal can be traced to the fall of 1997 when Congress approved a plan to buy $1 billion of anti-drug advertising over five years for its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. These purchases were contingent on a private-sector match in which each government anti-drug ad buy would be matched by another free anti-drug ad to be aired on the networks.
As major networks grew dissatisfied with the deal against the backdrop of a booming dot-com economy, in which ad space was increasingly cherished, the networks bargained with the government. As a way to redeem the second free ad slot that they had promised to the government, the networks could use the plots of their sitcoms and dramas to fulfill the requirement—effectively taking large sums of free money to weave in War on Drugs government propaganda into their plot lines. In this deal, both sides won out: While the networks were able to sell the commercials to the private sector that they would have given away for free, the government was rewarded with a much more insidious way to spread “anti-drug” content.
Put another way: If you’re curious why there were so many corny and ham-fisted anti-drug plot lines in your favorite shows growing up, they didn’t emerge from some organic social contagion about combating drug abuse. Instead, they were well-compensated, unattributed, and undisclosed commercials paid by the federal government that helped them sustain the requisite moral panic around its $50 billion a year “war on drugs” pursuant policy goals of caging surplus black and brown populations and maintaining a militarized presence in most of Latin America.
Just as the Armed Forces and the CIA have given Hollywood funds and access in exchange for positive coverage and the ability to review scripts, the exchange between the networks and the ONDCP was similar. Starting in the spring of 1998, networks would send advanced scripts and tapes to federal drug officials who assigned to them a monetary value depending on the content, ratings impact, and length of the episode. Given that the program was quite secret, it is often hard to figure exactly which episode was valued at what amount. However, drawing mostly from Salon and the New York Times’ reporting at the time, the clips presented here are from nine different series that each aired episodes from 1998 to 1999 that were submitted for government approval. When possible, the government’s changes to content and the monetary value of the episodes are noted.