Funding earmarked for anti-drug commercials is too high? Well, that’s a personal opinion, I suppose. Effectiveness of this particular commercial is debatable, too. Blowback? It’s strictly a case study of one AP English class, but the majority of the kids thought that the commercial was funny and a statement about peer pressure, and not drugs. Plus, they thought the fact that it was gross would make it more effective. But these are kids who have been trained for some time to deconstruct more than the average teenager, so who knows.
Look, I think people are looking at these commercials through their own filter and not through a 13-16 year old.
You acknowledge peer pressure may be a factor with starting recreational drugs. This commercial is specifically targetting peer pressure (which, admittedly, might be a small, small percentage, but does that mean we ignore it?). How is it not appropriate?
I’m not talking about a dollar amount, although making and running those ads as often as they seem to can’t be cheap. I’m saying the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Well, it IS an allegory about drugs, but okay, they think it’s funny. Does that mean it works? For that matter, no offense intended, but as a teacher, are you sure they’d tell you how they really feel about something related to drugs? I mean, going on pure statistics, a good chunk of your students have at least tried marijuana. Do you think they’d tell you?
Possibly. But I’m pretty confident that kids don’t like being talked down to (my 14-year-old brother can’t be the only one), and I think a lot of them would dislike the tone of these commercials - not just the leech ones, I mean in general.
I didn’t say it’s inappropriate. I said it’s stupid and that I doubt it’s effective.
Well, when you say “peer pressure” there are two factors to that - (1) people actually pressing others to smoke pot (“if you wanna be cool, gotta smoke this”), which as WhyNot has said, simply doesn’t happen very much (at least in my experience); and (2) seeing other people, your friends and such, getting high and having a good time with it.
The second factor is I think a sort of “peer pressure”, at least by example; and while those who never smoke may never know for sure whether it is fun, they can definitely see other people having fun, and make the connection.
The reason I dislike attempting to motivate kids with this sort of ad is twofold:
(1) I disagree with the goal of abstenance - in my opinion, the goal ought to be moderation. Making the goal “total abstenance” is a bad idea, because it leads to extremes - once someone takes a single toke, ever, and sees that nothing truly bad happens - what is to stop them from regarding all your advice with contempt and becomming a total stoner? Much better to have as one’s goal a healthy and moderate approach; and
(2) I do not think it is effective. It may work with some kids, just as any form of fear-mongering may work on some; it will not work on those you most want it to work on. It certainly did not work on me when I was a kid.
I think you’re misconstruing what peer pressure is here. It’s not, as you say, stoners sitting around pressuring people. It’s trying to be like other kids. You’ve been smoking for ten years, but I’ve been teaching for 13 and there aren’t many days that go by where I don’t see some type of peer pressure on the parts of the kids, from how they behave in class versus with me one-on-one, to where they sit in the cafeteria, to what they wear, classes they take, clubs they join, and on and on and on. It can be subtle or blatant, and sometimes kid don’t even realize they’re doing it, but yes, the mere fact that someone smokes in school influences someone, whether meant or not.
I was responding to your idea that the kids will react poorly because you believe they’re being condescended or lied to. These kids don’t seem to think that. As for the rest, heh, you’d be surprised how many things the kids tell me. Like I said, these ARE AP kids, with a rather large Mormon contingent (see the “vagina” thread for some of the adventures I’ve had with them), who are involved in the campus’s SADD and anti-drug organizations. Now, my NON-AP classes, hell, I have kids high in class. But yes, I understand what you’re saying, but these kids will be straightforward with me (you should hear what they thought of my ex-girlfriend…before I broke up with her.)
Eh. Agree to disagree. I don’t see them as talking down, although if you can explain HOW it’s talking down I’d certainly listen.
Again, I’m just seeing it different, but I’d be interested in hearing what your opinions on effective ads would be.
I’m sad to say that I know a number of teenagers who have seen these PSAs and completely missed the irony. They actually think that it’s now a trend to put leeches on your body. My niece and her friends were discussing how stupid this was and how they’d never put leeches on themselves, but everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who totally does it.
The connection between leeches and drugs hasn’t been made, at least in this small town, which I’d say makes this campaign a pretty pathetic failure. When I asked about the joint at the end of the commercial they said that, yeah, obviously somebody was trying to liken the SLOMing to smoking, but smoking pot wasn’t gross.
Perhaps their inability to grasp the point implies they’ve already been indulging in pot. :dubious:
I have just got to a place where I could view the youtube clip. This is fucking awesome. There’s no parodying this; this is truly the pinnacle of human achievement, right here. And we’re witnessing it, guys.
Fucking yes.
Really. I can’t get over how transcendentally brilliant this is. Moreover, I have to get hold of a leech right now.
I was an AP kid myself, actually (and I saw people who were stoned in my classes too). Those probably aren’t the kids you have to worry about in the first place, by and large, but I’m glad to hear you have a good bond with your kids.
I think these ads just paint an exaggerated picture of what pot does, and when the kids try pot, as most of them eventually do, they find out what they’ve heard isn’t true.
I’m not an ad exec, so I really haven’t planned any. I think our whole approach to drugs is nuts, and if it were my call, I don’t think we’d be running ads like this at all. The leech ad isn’t bad compared to some of them - like the one that linked pot with terrorism - but I doubt the effectiveness of scaring kids away from drugs with commercials.
So we know this commercial is effective among kids who are already predisposed to agree with its message. Great. Sounds like a real effective use of my tax money.
Yeah, yeah I would!
(My parents asked me the “jump off a bridge” question ONCE. I was always a smartass and said, “Yeah, I would!” They never asked me again.)
Whenever I think of leeches, I think of the skinny-dipping scene in Stand By Me, where Wil Wheaton
I don’t see what the big mystery is on why or why not someone would use drugs.
When growing up, to name two examples, they told me “Well, alcohol is bad for you. You’ll lose all your friends, become an alcoholic, and die a sad and lonely death if you drink”. They also said “Sex is bad. If you have sex, you’ll get many STDs, the girl will get pregnant every time even if you use a condom, and you’ll be throwing your life away”.
Needless to say, like most levelheaded adults, I enjoy moderate drinking and plentiful sex. So far, none of these evil world-ending things have happened to me. Now if they are telling me the same things about drugs, and the other ones were lies, what type of conclusion is logically formed?
I didn’t smoke pot to be part of the crowd. I smoked it to get high. Leeches don’t get you high. Therefore the commercial is stupid. It’s based on a false premise. Drug use has fuck all to do with peer pressure.
If the producers of these anti-drug commercials really want to have any credibility with kids, they have to shut up about the pot altogether. They should just admit that pot is relatively benign but other drugs are not. Quit insulting everyone’s intelligence by harping on it and talk about the really nasty shit like meth. A PSA that told kids “Ok, pot’s not going to hurt you, but meth is a whole other animal” might get their attention. I know first hand that the very first second a PSA tries to start in about pot is the second the target audience is lost. It’s impossible to get anybody to take you seriously about drugs if you can’t be honest about marijuana.
I’m a teenager. That ad grossed me out, but it hasn’t changed my opinion. I’m ambivalent about the health issues involved, but quite frankly, the fact that pot’s illegal is enough to prevent me from doing anything. It’d be nice if the ads they made against pot were disgusting in a relevant way; leeches and marijuana simply aren’t the same, and comparing them isn’t going to make me think that marijuana is gross.
This plan really isn’t effective. It’s just annoying.
Just to clarify, the whole toad-licking thing was grossly mischaracterized. Toads aren’t licked, toads aren’t smoked. Certain ones have glands that can be “milked” for venom that contains a smokable psychedelic substance (which is itself illegal, so I guess someone needs to get busy arresting all these renegade toads).
There are many legal sources that can be used as precursors for some wildly potent outlawed psychedelic drugs. However, few people people crave such a deep experience that they’re willing to maintain a living toad that reaches 8-12 inches in size, consumes expensive quantities of fishbait, yet produces a dose only every 6 weeks. Most weekend trippers are content to settle for a bag of weed and a hit of E.
Yeah…but don’t you know, one puff on a joint and suddenly you want to go on to harder drugs, like meth. The bullshit theory is that pot is a “gateway drug.” So if you stop the little darlings from getting stoned, they’ll never even think of trying the meth. Or something like that. It just doesn’t compute. Hell, my parents partook of the evil weed in their youth, and they turned out fine, so there goes the “pot will ruin everybody’s life if they touch it once” message. I bet that’s true of an awful lot of people in my general age group.
I remember seeing quite a few anti-drug PSAs while growing up and the main impact they had on me was to make me think that the commercials and the people who made them were dumb and ham-handed. None of the stuff I’ve seen from the anti-drug people in close to 20 years has changed that opinion.
I tried several drugs because I wanted to see what they were like. Yes, I was around people who did drugs, but I also had friends in that group who didn’t do drugs and who were not denigrated for refusing them. Peer pressure was a non-issue considering that by the time I was hanging out with this circle of friends I was becoming more assertive and opinionated than I was when I was younger.
I don’t get the whole pot is harmless and other drugs are thing. Cocaine is fairly harmless (unless it is cut with toxic substances or in a smokeable form). I don’t know how many businessman and lawyers I know that use cocaine. It a fun drug that can actually help you get more done while you do it.
Sure there are drugs like PCP that will fuck you up in a hurry. But I would rather my college age kid was doing cocaine and spending 48 hours writing a kick ass paper than smoking pot and listening to Dark Side of the Moon.
And if I found out my kid was doing leeches, I would just cry.
Might we conclude that the indulgence in the drug might be responsible for the failure to comprehend that the message is about the silliness of succumbing to peer pressure and does not in any way mean that leeches induce highs? :rolleyes:
As for peer pressure, no, nobody tries to shove a blunt in your face, but even among adults, it’s subtext that if you don’t indulge, you are simply Not Cool. I’m guessing the majority of pot fans in this thread think along those lines even if they never utter the words. I’d like to be wrong.
On other boards, I’ve seen blatant berating of non-users by users which made me wonder if some people are forever stuck in the hotbed of sophisticated social interaction known as high school.
I think what you’re failing to comprehend is that people think the commercial is misguided not because of the leeches but because of the focus on peer pressure. From my own experience, people smoke weed because they want to smoke weed, not on some 1970’s cartoonish situation of “c’mon, don’t you want to be cool?”
I think you’re wrong. I think that drama happens entirely in people’s own heads; the folks who are holding the weed don’t care whether you smoke it. In fact I personally would prefer you didn’t, because it’s more for me
I can’t address what I haven’t seen elsewhere, but I can tell you I definitely never see that unless non-users start looking down their noses at users and throwing a lot of emptyheaded antidrug propaganda around. Then the gloves come off.
It’s like that old saying about having a tattoo… the only difference between people who smoke weed and those who don’t smoke weed is that the people who smoke weed don’t care whether other people smoke weed or not.
That’s why the commercial is dumb. Nothing to do with actual leeches.
