If nothing else, the Montana Meth Project’s various ad campaigns are virtually unavoidable in every corner of the state.
Nine years after the Montana Meth Project was founded, nine years after millions of dollars were spent to saturate the state with horrifying images (and to enrich countless publishers, TV executives, billboard companies, etc.), meth use is said to be making a huge comback in Montana and is the No. 1 public safety threat in Billings.
What can we do?
“We need to expand this ‘Not Even Once’ message,” said Montana Meth Project Executive Director Amy Rue, referring to the group campaign targeted at teens. “We need to extend the message to adults.”
I don’t know if the Montana Meth Project is entirely privately funded these days, but if it isn’t my own slogan would be “Not Even One Dime in Public Money.”
In 2009, I wrote three stories for the Billings Gazette, a general story raising all sorts of questions about the effectiveness of the project’s campaign, another about a Lewistown native’s professional critique of the project, and a third about how the project was funded and how it spent its money.
The critics I interviewed were not exactly malcontent dopers. They included then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the head of a drug-treatment facility, the director of the state Chemical Dependency Bureau, and two academics who conducted detailed research and published their findings in peer-reviewed journals.
One researcher concluded that “there is no compelling evidence that teenage meth use has declined as a result of the ads.” The other said the Montana Meth Project’s multimillion-dollar campaign “has had no discernable impact on meth use.”
What was the reaction from the Montana Meth Project?
Silence on the part of its founder, billionaire Tom Siebel, and the folks who ran his foundation in California. And from the project’s representatives in Montana, all I heard was defensive carping, attacks on their critics and challenges of the academic bona fides of the two researchers.
In fact, I encountered something working on that story that I have never had to deal with before or since. Several days before the Gazette published my stories, Bill Slaughter, the former director of the state Department of Corrections and then director of the Montana Meth Project, wrote a lengthy letter to the editor and publisher of the Gazette, objecting to what he thought my stories were going to say. He wasn’t quite so dismissive of me as he had been of those academic researchers, but the tone was similar.
To their credit, the editor and publisher were not daunted by the letter, even though Mike Gulledge, who is still the publisher, was chairman of the Montana Meth Project board of directors at the time.
The point is, I learned then that the Montana Meth Project is devoted above all else to aggrandizing the Montana Meth Project at the expense of the truth and even of good manners.
Today’s story in the Gazette shows that the project is still playing the same game. The video attached to the story is the latest ad to roll out of the project’s studios. It does talk about how meth use is suddenly on the rise again in Montana, but one of the first messages flashed on the screen is the news that the Montana Meth Project is “#3 most effective foundation worldwide.”
In other words, in face of this terrible threat to public safety, the not-so-subtle message is that we need to funnel more money into the incredibly effective Montana Meth Project. Never mind that the rest of the video would suggest that the project has not been effective at all.
The whole thing has been so strange. It’s as if no one wants to challenge a billionaire who decides to bankroll a massive public relations campaign, even though that billionaire resolutely refuses to listen to any evidence that the campaign may not be working.
That may explain why, a few years ago, there were persistent rumors that Siebel, then a part-time resident of Montana, was planning to run for governor. Why else would he throw millions at a campaign that didn’t seem to be working, except in hopes of keeping his name and his face in front of the public?
Well, he never did run for governor, and the advertising blitz continues even as we enter a new phase of rampant abuse of methamphetamine. At this rate, neither the ad campaign nor the epidemic use of meth will ever end.
