LANSING — Anti-drug ads are on posters and billboards, seen on television and heard over the airwaves. But a new study on public attitudes toward drugs showed such national anti-drug advertising fails to discourage drug use, but state experts say the truth isn’t always in the statistics.

A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) showed national anti-drug advertising hasn’t given youths a negative perception of substance use, but rather made it seem normal.

Between 1998 and 2004, Congress appropriated more than $1.2 billion to the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign, a figure that the GAO recommends be reduced for 2007.

Yet anti-drug ads flashing across the television screen aren’t always sponsored nationally.

For example, the Michigan Department of Community Health’s Office of Drug Control partners with Advertising for Drug Free America in providing ads aimed at discouraging youth drug use in the state.

“This is advertising at the national level that they make available to states,” said Geralyn Lasher, a communications officer for the department.

The state has spent $87,500 this year to buy media spots for anti-drug ads, Lasher said.

Yet the state goes beyond national advertising by placing ads in specific areas where youth drug use is prevalent, Lasher said.

“In Michigan, we have real focus groups on anti-methamphetamine,” Lasher said. Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as meth, is made in illegal laboratories, often from over-the-counter medications. It’s easy for users to get hooked and become dependent, according to Community Health.

Measures to stop the use and production of meth involve many state agencies, Lasher said, including advertising and an informational Web site, www.michiganmethwatch.org.

The effectiveness of this approach is hard to evaluate, she said.

“We’ve seen a dramatic drop in the labs that have been producing methamphetamine,” Lasher said. “We know there is less being produced in Michigan, and we do everything to let people know the effects of the use of the drug.”

Additional drug-prevention efforts occur at county and local levels, she said. For example, the state works closely with many drug-prevention organizations through state police and sheriffs’ offices.

Chad Hurrle, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officer for Lake County, has been educating students about substance and drug abuse for nine years.

“The advertising I do is mainly through posters in schools,” Hurrle said. “I work very closely with schools.”

He said keeping track of numbers is nearly impossible, but he believes that his work does have an impact.

“Being a person that does this and having been in this program this long, I see that it does work, but it’s all in how you evaluate it,” Hurrle said. Numbers can be manipulated to bolster either side of the question of whether anti-drug ads work, he said.

“If I reach one or two kids, is it worth it?” he said. “It is to me, and it is to their parents.”

Bruce Vanden Bergh, an advertising professor at Michigan State University, said one problem is not always in the type of advertising, but how advertising must be coupled with other efforts.

“If you just think about advertising and what it can do, especially in this day and age, it can get across one idea. It has to be simple,” Vanden Bergh said. “It can make people aware and make people think about something, but it has to be combined with other things to make it effective.”

Other factors, in the case of anti-drug advertising, include intervention by family, friends and health professionals. This, coupled with advertising, can be effective, he said.

A problem with health advertising is the amount of information crammed into a small segment of space or time, Vanden Bergh said.

“If you’re talking about a topic youth are trying to avoid, then you don’t have a chance to say a lot,” he said. “Health advertising makes the mistake of saying too much.”