Meth Mouth: Tom Siebel's Brash Anti-Crystal Campaign

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Photograph Courtesy of Meth Project

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Photograph Courtesy of Meth Project

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Siebel, who is notoriously controlling -- at Siebel Systems, he banned employees from eating at their desks and fired the worst-performing 5% of his workforce every six months -- handpicked the staff. He immersed himself in every step of the process, from designing the outreach programs for schools to choosing the campaign's tagline, "Meth: Not Even Once," which is printed on everything from stickers to black Livestrong-esque bracelets to Meth Project day planners.

Siebel made public appearances across the state. "I started spending time at Montana community events, and I'd be seated at the table next to some young girl who might be 15, 16 years old and was in recovery and, you know, she and her father would tell a story about how she spent a year on the streets basically doing anything and everything to get meth," he says, and then pauses. For a moment, he appears to choke up. "It just rips your heart out. I have to say it's more than I bargained for." When I ask whether anyone close to him had ever had a substance-abuse problem, he replies, "Oh, sure. Not that I'd want to go into detail. It would be hard." He refuses to say another word about it.

Siebel also hired the directors who made the project's TV spots. So far they've included Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel), notoriously controlling English auteur Tony Kaye (American History X), and notoriously controlling American auteur Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream). Siebel hasn't yet persuaded Quentin Tarantino to get involved. "This was, like, made for him," he says of the notoriously controlling Pulp Fiction auteur.

The first Meth Project ads launched in late 2005. Part cinema verité, part Calvin Klein pederast-chic, they show addicted teens robbing homes, selling their bodies, beating up their parents, and getting into car crashes. The ads are impeccably produced, with restive handheld-camera work and grainy, washed-out palettes.

Kaye directed the original spots. The one that got the most attention, a Psycho homage entitled "Bathtub," shows a teenage girl getting ready to go over to a friend's house, where she intends to try meth for the first time. She steps into the shower, and then, looking down, sees that the water is stained red. She begins screaming. She turns and sees, cowering in the corner, an emaciated, shaking future version of herself, covered in cuts and sores. "Don't do it, don't do it," her meth doppelgänger pleads.

Another example, entitled "Sisters" and directed by Iñárritu, shows two wan, unkempt, barely teenage girls, covered in sores, their eyes vacant -- graphic shorthand for tweakers -- approaching some sinister-looking men at a gas station at night. "You guys can do anything you want to me for 50 bucks," one of the girls says. They go into the station bathroom with the men, and, as the door closes, the narrator intones: "This isn't normal. But on meth, it is." This is one of the more subtle spots.

"If you think this is over the top, if you think this is too graphic, if you think it's over the edge," Siebel tells me, "that's because you're not 16."

Siebel estimates that he has spent $26 million on the Meth Project. In the Montana Meth Project's first two years, 45,000 television and 35,000 radio spots aired, 10,000 print ads ran, and 1,000 billboards went up. The point was total saturation, and, according to Siebel, it worked. Meth use among teens was already steadily falling in the state: According to the Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the percentage of high-school students who said they had ever used meth fell from 13.5% in 1999 to 8.3% in 2005, dropping an average of 7.8% each year. After the Meth Project began, the decline accelerated; by 2007, 4.6% of high schoolers said they had used the drug, down 45% from 2005. Testifying before Congress in 2007, Siebel claimed, "Meth Project results in Montana have been more effective than any drug-prevention program in history."

Richard Rawson, a professor in addiction studies at the UCLA School of Medicine, is less skeptical than he once was. "The research literature says doing exaggerated claims and scare tactics don't work very well for prevention," he says. "However, the program in Montana is far more than that." In addition to the ads, there have been school outreach programs and public art projects. The state has also created experimental rehab facilities for meth-addicted criminals and specialized drug courts.