DRUGS DEPICTED IN POP-CULTURE MEDIA

A government study released recently says that people are depicted doing drugs, drinking or smoking in 98 percent of the top movie rentals and 27 percent of the most popular songs of 1996 and 1997. Fewer than half these movie scenes and song lyrics mentioned any downside to these activities. The $400,000 study of 200 movies -- rated G for all ages to NC-17, no one under 17 admitted -- and 1,000 songs was commissioned by the Office of Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The study stopped short of saying that music and films cause young people to use drugs, alcohol and tobacco. But, of course, we know that they do. The entire, multibillion-dollar advertising industry is based on the well-tested premise that such expenditures in the mass media and popular culture influence behavior and accomplish this in subtle but often profound ways.

The answer isn't very likely to be found in new restrictions on the First Amendment protected speech. There was a time when makers of motion pictures and popular music accepted certain standards of responsibility and restraint that were industry norms. Music and movie moguls could still turn away from their current anything-goes attitude to re-embrace such restraint.

The Framers of our Constitution would have understood. They called it ordered liberty. They bequeathed it to us in a healthy republic "if," Benjamin Franklin replied when asked by a lady outside the constitutional convention, "you can keep it."