Welcome to SDMB indecisive1.
Let’s see th eadvice fo ranti drug advertisers so far is
- Tell the truth
- Tell in a way that people care
two items don’t make a list!
3) do I say hi Polly now? was it Polly?
4) what’s the matter with your keyboard?
It was “Hi opal”…but that’s declasse now.
Welcome.
I wish the anti-drug ads would concentrate more on honesty and known problems (for example, drunk driving). I’m still waiting for the PSA that admits that pot is a lot less dangerous than alcohol, is really rather fun, but that it’s greatest danger is making some people lethargic couch potatoes (kinda like TV).
Also-- as far as the “gateway theory” goes, I think that some people might try ‘harder’ drugs after they try pot because their pot suppliers might also deal heroin, meth, coke, etc. So it is more a case of “one-stop shopping” than it is “pot doesn’t do it for me anymore-- better try heroin.”
I believe this is one of the main points the Dutch government uses in justifying their pot decriminalization: if you isolate the pot from the hard drug pushers, people will only use pot as they are only exposed to pot (and not the harder stuff).
Thanks for ther link. Is it just me, or do the LSD and Mescaline dosed spiders seem to work more attention into the intricate detail of their webs?
Sorry to get off track.
Have I ever been influenced by an anti-drug ad on TV, radio, in a magazine, online, etc? Nope.
Have I ‘experimented’ with several different ‘light’ drugs? Yes.
Did the ads have any influence whatsoever on me? Again, no.
I believe I’m in the target audience for many of the ads (I’m sixteen and officially an ‘at-risk’ youth, or so says my school), and THEY ARE NOT EFFECTIVE. Honestly, telling a teenager that in thirty years they’ll have no memory because they smoke weed is like saying, and I quote “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
The most effective ‘official’ anti-drug message I ever got was when two cops from Delaware’s anti-heroin squad came and talked at my school, complete with a slideshow of OD victims. No faces blurred out or anything. Died with the needle still in their hands. All of the victims were ‘like us’ in that they were in high school, ‘good kids’, suburban, middle-class, and so on. Just a few weeks ago, two reformed addicts came and talked to our health class. It was utterly unscripted - they got up there, and they basically told us their life stories. Someone up there who’s a foot taller than you but probably weighs the same really hits it home. Actually seeing track marks does. The message needs to be something immediate and THERE, not some abstract “Well, this could happen to you.” Someone saying “This happened to me BECAUSE OF these drugs” is far more real. I personally care about what may happen to me because of what I put into it; I know I’m not coming from the same background as most people my age, though. I freely admit that most teenagers have no sense of long term consequences - smoking a joint or snorting some coke isn’t going to hurt me right now, that’s what matters. I think it’s very much an issue of approaching it from a ‘grown-up’ prespective, which most people know, is utterly different than a teen perspective.
Of course, the ads do kind of amuse me. Does that count as influence?
ninjaChick!
You make my point on the matter far better than I do.
and thank for the welcomes, simon and cynic
These advertisments are just plain stupid. Not sure what they are trying to prove making a HILARIOUS commercial about not doing drugs. Let me explain:
At movie theater with a friend of mine who is an on and of druggie. (I am not a druggie tho, never did/will do that stuff.). And I always tried to keep him away from that crowd, We did healthy activities and shit. So this commercial comes on with the 4 teenagers in the car at a drive through. It shows like 4 version of what could happen, with the last version them speeding off only to hit a girl on a bike. The only problem was that the first three versions had me laughing my ass off! I was laughing so hard I missed the point of the whole thing about them hitting the little kid.
THey should give those Truth.com guys something meaningful to say. They have some convincing commercials but the fact is, cigerette’s are not that big of a deal to many people. If they told everyone the truth of what happens to you when you smoke weed like everyday (yuo become a slob and never advance in life and never mature and your only friends are other losers like you.) Then they would have something worthwhile to say.
my $00.02
You know, you want a good anti-smoking message, read Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley. It’s mostly factual, if not true. That is, the people and places, if fictionalized, are accurate, as are many of the events. One of my father’s friends was a RJR flack in his younger days, and he picked it up, and then couldn’t put it down. Says it was just like when he worked there.
They are pretty darn close to evil.
It’s just that the adverts suck. You want a good anti-smoking ad? The anti-cool ones were pretty good. Where they showed the bad breath and suchlike. Not too exaggerated. People have a pretty good bullshit detector.
You want a good one? Have kids going to a concert. Get busted by off-duty cop/security. Show them being dragged in, booked, printed.
Show college application stamped rejected over the “Have you been convicted of a felony” thing. Then a job application, then another.
Show people working at McDonald’s for the rest of their life. And losing employee of the month to the cheerful learning disabled person as they clean out the toilet.
Show the actual consequences.
Yes, I know that weed’s not that bad… (personally, I think it should be under the same restrictions as alcohol and tobacco… what the restrictions should be… well, outlaw one, outlaw the others, make them all free, I don’t care.) but if you want anti-ads, go for it. Hell, show going to a dealer in full-paranoia mode. Show getting ripped off. Show being broke all the time.
You can make a lot of good scary ads without lying. I liked the Project SCUM one. Could have been written better, though.
And, I repeat, every time I see one, my primary impulse is, “You know, I havn’t had eggs in a while. Maybe breakfast tomorrow.”
Actually it is true that a follow up study of anti-drug ads aimed at young kids showed the exact opposite of the desired effect, especially on the lowest risk kids … no, I’ve never thought about using drugs … before!
Agreed that the ads, and DARE, etc. accomplish little at best.
BUT … if you you were in charge, what would you do to help influence the choices made by High Schoolers? What would work?
(Assuming that you think that it is a good idea that they remain abstinent or at least use condoms and foam if they have sex, don’ t smoke tobacco or pot, or drink alcohol, or do other recreational drugs. As a parent of one teen-ager and one soon to be, I think that these are good goals.)
Ninjachick,
My first read-through missed your comment on what was effective.
That was a previous method … problem was that most kids have this sense of invulnerability … nagonnahappen to me … I can stop whenever I want to. Seeing car-wrecks doesn’t stop too many kids from drinking and driving.
And the risk of bringing in people who been there done that is that it risks glorifying the story to those at greatest risk … look at all the attention this person is getting now because they used drugs earlier on, boy, I’d love everyone listening to me like that …
E-Sabbath, your thoughts seem reasonable. You need credibility, start shittin them and you’ve lost.
Fact is that pot is easier for teens to get because it is illegal, easier than regulated tobacco. And 10 to 20 times more potent than it was in my day as a consequence of “the drug war” driving its production into the hands of professional horticulturists hybridizing the hell out of it for rapid indoor growth and profitability.
Decriminalizing pot, heck legalizing it and taxing the shit out of it, would cut down its use by teeens and decrease its association with later drug use which may be true partly because it introduces so many into the world of illicit drug usage.
Good question. I think that that first and foremost we should be honest. I would make media presentations which addressed each issue one at a time and discussed the relative dangers in a truthful, objective and non-moralistic way.
Instead of “Don’t have sex,” “These are the problems that can arise from unprotected sex…”
Instead of “Cigarettes will kill you” “Cigarettes can have very harmful long-term effects. It can take a long time. many years, before the damage becomes known, and some people might never have problems at all but smoking does increase your risk for X,Y and Z. Cigarettes are also very addictive and very difficult to quit…”
Instead of “Pot will fry your brain,” Marijuana is the least dangerous of all illegal drugs. You won’t OD on it or die. It won’t make you think you can fly, but it does have carcinogens, it can make some people lazy and sedentary, very long term use may reduce sperm count, it stops being really effective after a while and some people suffer from depression when they quit. The truth is, though, a little toke here and there is really pretty harmless.
I think this honesty creates more credibility for when you get to the truly dangerous drugs.
“Now, crack, that is some truly evil shit, stay away from that shit, ok. Pot won’t kill you but crack will.”
I think the kids will feel like they’ve been told the truth and that they haven’t been fed a line of propaganda bullshit. I don’t know why it’s so hard for tyhe government/ DARE/ schools, etc. to just admit that some drugs are worse than other drugs, and that we shouldn’t waste our time preaching about the kind bud when methamphetamine is a much more serious threat.
Sure the ads have influenced me. When I see them, they influence my mood - I typically feel disgust, revulsion, anger, confusion… more anger… etc.
I don’t do drugs (or drink) because of my own decision. The government’s opinion on the matter never has, or would have, mattered, and I wish they’d stay the hell out of it.
But the prevailing emotion I feel at these ads is rage: rage at the stupidity of the War on Drugs for criminalizing addiction and throwing so many people (many of them harmless) in jail, for obliterating everyone’s right to privacy, for people’s compulsive, Puritan interference in the lives of others, and for being such an unparalleled waste of money and effort. I’ve read that 1/6 of all federal agents are working on something related to drug enforcement. If we’d been putting anywhere near that kind of effort into fighting terrorism, the New York skyline might be different, if you know what I mean.
Sorry for the rant, but I did stay on the topic at first. 
Also, props on your last post, Diogenes.
As I understand it, Dan Quayle was quoted as saying, “I love the Osbourne’s! There is no way Conservatives or the Christian right faction could produce a show or commercial with as powerful an anti-drug message as Ozzy has managed.”
The world can be a scary place when you start agreeing with Dan, but I can’t find the bloody remote…SHARRRRRON!
I should point out for the sake of accuracy that Ozzy’s shakes are directly related to the anti-psychotics he’s on, thanks to a court order… long story about beating up Sharon in the 80s.
The psychotics, now… But it’s a good point. You also have to make the message plausible. Kids don’t believe they will be killed. So don’t emphasize that Crack Kills. Point out the social effects first. That part, people will take to heart.
The thing is, the real audience of the ads isnt the 16 year old “at risk group”. Its the 30 something, conservative, ultra religious bible belters. Being “tough on drugs” is an easy way to win extra popularity points. If you actually look at the ads from an apriori perspective that drugs ARE as evil as the ads make them out to be, then they can be surprisingly effective.
I know a couple of guys who said the exact same thing. That’s why I don’t believe the people who say that marijuana doesn’t encourage people to try harder drugs. I know people who attest that it did that very thing, in their case.
Go back and read the statistics on page one. Only a very small percentage of those who smoke weed move on to harder drugs.
I know lots and lots of people who have smoked lots and lots of doobies without ever getting the urge to boot up smack.
Also, a personality type who will “need a better high” would most likely try crack or heroin even if marijuana did not exist. The gateway theory dies a hard death, many continue to cling to it.
Diogenes:
Actually, yeah. A couple of weeks ago I was, er, toasty, and the “MARIJUANA - IT’S MORE DANGEROUS THAN WE THOUGHT” ad came on.
The ad “influenced” me to laugh so hard that the milk I was drinking dribbled out of my nose.