However, both the Drug Czar’s Office and the so-called Partnership For A Drug-Free America have now publicly opposed including alcohol in the current program, claiming that there is just not enough money.
See
Drug Czar Returns To Party Line,
Opposes Including Ads Warning Kids About Alcohol
and
Bennett and Cuomo of The Partnership for A Marijuana-Free America
Claim They Don’t Have Enough Money To Tell The Truth About Alcohol.
But They Have Plenty To Lie About Marijuana.
In their letter to the New York Times, the former drug-addicted Drug Czar and Cuomo, claim that "The alcohol industry spends billions on marketing and promotion each year. To compete effectively, the Government would require hundreds of millions more to change teen-age attitudes about drinking."

In other words, the need is so great that they can’t do anything without huge amounts of new money. It would seem to be more reasonable to say that the alcohol advertising campaigns makes the need more urgent, so they should act without delay.

Of course, they know that they will never get the funding for an anti-alcohol campaign. Not that they are apt to seek it with great diligence.
See
"The Partnership is comprised primarily of advertising professionals,
who work for the very ad firms that produce the alcohol advertising
that the drug czar’s media campaign would counterbalance, if it included alcohol counter-ads.
The partnership was founded on alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical money."

However, there is always a finite amount of money available, so whatever is available should be allocated on a rational basis, determined by an objective assessment of the relative dangers of various substances. There are a variety of ways of determining these dangers, so there may be differences in opinions on precise percentage allocations, but this is a better approach than an arbitrary or political decision without any rational basis.

For another estimate of the impact on youth, Mothers Against Drunk Driving in their press release calling for alcohol to be included, cited the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which said that in 1994 underage drinking killed 6,350 youth ages 12-20, while illicit drug use killed 980.

See
Mothers Against Drunk Driving Denounce Partnership For A Marijuana-Free America
For Opposing Warnings About Alcohol -- PR Disaster For Pharmaceutical Lobby Grows

By that measure, over 80% of all of the programs should be devoted to alcohol, so saying that nothing should be done about alcohol until new funding is available is to ignore 80% of the problem. Also, calling for a separately funded alcohol program would mean that that program should be five or six times as large as the current program. That seems unlikely in the extreme.

Moreover, the Drug Czar’s own web site says that "drug prevention programs are more likely to succeed if they also address underage drinking."
See
The Drug Czar’s Own Web Site Says,
"drug prevention programs are more likely to succeed if they also address underage drinking."

That means that the inclusion of warnings about alcohol would increase the credibility of the current program, not weaken it.

However, if one accepts the principle that there should be a rational basis for the allocation of funding for the "drug education," then this would bring into question the overwhelming concentration on marijuana.
See
Page On The Drug Czar’s Web Site—Projectknow.Com—Is Called "True Lies" And It Truly Is

If someone argues that it is important to warn about marijuana because it is supposedly a "gateway drug",
See
The Wall Street Journal Responds To The IOM Report
By Having Califano Defend The "Gateway Theory"
then it would be even more important to include anti-alcohol ads, because as the Drug Czar’s own cite says, "For boys, alcohol is the precursor to marijuana and illegal drugs. For girls, tobacco smoking along with alcohol is the precursor."

At the end of this page there are links to a wide variety of material comparing the consequences of alcohol and marijuana use.

We should assume that the people who run the alcohol industry are aware of these facts and that is why they are so desperate to prevent "drug education" prohibitionist propaganda from including their products. They would be better advised to learn from the experience of the tobacco industry. No one believed their lies, but the lying was what got them in trouble.

Of course the media collect huge sums from the alcohol industry and hence are their accomplices in encouraging underage drinking and binge drinking by drinkers of all ages.
See
Magazine Publishers of America Agree To Feature Prohibitionist Propaganda In Content
To Get Share of $775 Million Ad Campaign