government used posters and advertisements to scare children and teenagers into avoiding drug use. Between 1971 and 2011, the U.S. spent more than $2.5 trillion fighting the war on drugs. Nixon also dramatically increased the presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created during his second term in 1973 to tackle both domestic drug use and the smuggling of illegal narcotics into America. The D.A.R.E. program began in 1983 (during the Reagan administration) and dovetailed with Nancy Reagan's campaign to educate children to "Just Say No" to drugs. The messaging permeated popular culture and was promoted by broadcasters through such venues as scripted television sitcoms and family programs, in effect to have fiction help influence reality. By 2003, the D.A.R.E. program had cost $230 million and involved 50,000 police officers, but never showed promising results in reducing illegal drug use. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988, is a domestic propaganda campaign designed to "influence the attitudes of the public and the news media with respect to drug abuse" with a related goal of "reducing and preventing drug abuse among young people in the United States". Now conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998, the media campaign cooperates with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other government and non-government organizations. Gulf War Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the US. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid by Kuwait's government. Among many other means of influencing US opinion, such as distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to US soldiers deployed in the region, "Free Kuwait" T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations, the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the US Congress in which a young woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor. The story helped tip both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and