New ads split top experts on drug addiction

During the 20 years since a woman cracked an egg into a hot skillet while saying, "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs," science has made great strides in understanding just how illicit drugs fry the mind. Now the nonprofit group responsible for the iconic anti-drug campaign has come out with a provocative message: that drug addiction is a disease worse than cancer, diabetes and AIDS. "It'd be better if I had cancer; then you wouldn't tell me what I'm going through is just a phase," a shirtless man says in a new public service announcement. "You wouldn't see my condition as a lack of willpower, but the disease that it truly is." Pilot-tested in Houston and Cincinnati last year, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's campaign hopes to help addicts and their loved ones overcome stigmas to seek treatment, said Ginna Marston, the group's executive vice president.

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