First of all, any child that hasn’t heard that smoking is bad for you a thousand times by the time they’re in preschool is probably being raised on the moon. Even back when I was a kid (when everyone still smoked and wasn’t assumed to be in league with the devil because of it) I knew it was bad for you. I’d been hearing it for years from my parents, teachers, etc.
Didn’t stop me or most of my friends though.
The problem with ads like these (anti-smoking and anti-drug ads) and some of the suggestions for ads (smokers are ugly, etc) is that they’re assuming that people will believe the ads and not their real life experience. The “people who smoke are ugly” idea sounds good but it’ll backfire as soon as the intended audience sees a great looking person walking down the steet smoking.
People don’t like to be lied to or manipulated. The surest way to get someone to do something that you don’t want them to do is to lie to them about it.
You’re right that the number for HS kids is quite a bit higher. Most national surveys peg the number (for at-least-once-in-the-kid’s-life use) at around 50%. I did a survey for my Sociology class that found the number (at my school, in my sample of 51 respondents) to be around 55%, I believe. It wasn’t a marijuana-specific study; it was about attitudes of teenagers towards drugs in general, and one of the questions dealt with respondents’ drug experience.
Not to hijack, but all the [unbiased] studies show that marijuana really is pretty harmless (especially compared to cigarettes), except for the intense social stigma created by its criminalization. Search the Straight Dope archive for that one, or look on the web (outside of government websites, as most of those have a political agenda, namely that they don’t want to admit that they screwed up in making hemp in general illegal).
If you want a general cite, the Erowid Cannabis [information] Vault has lots of good info. Anyway, the whole point of this mini-rant is, don’t discard marijuana as a dangerous, evil death-drug offhand, not if you’re going to wave the flag of the war against ignorance (and you wave it, as a Doper, every time you login to the SDMB). I’m not telling you to go out and smoke pot, I’m telling you to lay down that sword of ignorance encrusted with jewels of good intent. (And no, I don’t smoke pot, thanks for asking.)
Do you know how many fetuses have been killed as a result of nicotine use by Mommies and Daddys?
Smokers are the only chance I’ve got for any Social Security benefits being available by the time I’m 65 or 70, so keep smoking you generous stained teeth nicotine lovers, because I’m counting on your dying before 65, but not until after you’ve kicked in a good chunk of your SS share.
Don’t deny yourself the luscious pleasure of a good, deep, lung filling, invigorating drag of your favorite smoke. Here, let me buy you a pack. What’s your brand? Unfiltered Camels? Great choice!
[sub]*And she said, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff and if you smoke yourself to death
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate
That you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette
[/sub] *
