what’s that addage? Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand?
Spooky sequential thread titles:
“People who do drugs are idiots!”
“Stupidest anti-drug commercial yet.”
— I think I’ve arrived at a conclusion…!
DoctorJ, THANK YOU for pointing that out. You are 100% correct - as the mom of a 12 year old son, it’s crap like that on TV that I find makes my job as a responsible parent trying to raise Mini2U even tougher. 
I opened this thread assuming it was the teenaged pregnant daughter.
Doctor J said, “I actually threw something at the television when I saw that one”
I did too! It was a shoe!
Now they are doing commercials where one guy suggests: hey, let’s solve all those problems by legalizing drugs.
Then the other guy says, "sure. Make it easy to get, like twinkies. Heroin stands at the minit mart!
Then, with a dissaproving look on his face, the other guy says “Bad idea.”
How KIND of them, for using the 30 second commercial spot to impartially and thoroughly explore the costs and benefits of legalizing drugs! It’s OBVIOUS that heroin stands at the minit mart would be a horrible idea because… umm…because we said it was bad! Argument over!: rolleyes:
According to the makers of the movies (specifically the director, I think), the main subject of the film is “addiction,” to drugs or to dreams. My feeling is that sometimes they go hand in hand.
The “it’s bad because we say so” ads have long been a target of derision in our house. I watch them just to laugh on them, and I don’t even DO drugs. Other than caffeine, anyway.
Didn’t they have that commercial too? Where the truth guys talk about 1 joint being equal to x-amount of cigarettes? The only problem with that argument is that most people don’t smoke two packs of joints a day!
By the way, a guy at the library I work at had to do a school report on tobacco companies…he went to truth.com to find some info and oops, truth.org (at that time) was totally porn! They changed it to something else now, but it was funny. He couldn’t stop the popups!
I swear, by FAR the most effective series of commercials to get kids to stop smoking weed would be just showing how stupid you can look/the horrors of the munchies.
Show a pretty girl being careful to select a well-balanced, satisfying and healthy meal. At the end of the week she checks her weight. She’s lost 3 pounds! Yay! Then she goes to a friend’s house and smokes a joint. Cut to that same girl with slitted eyes staring at a tv with a gallon of ice cream in her lap.
Show a guy looking smooth, talking to a girl he digs at school. She obviously digs him back, and that night they end up at the same party. He goes off with his friends and tokes up, stumbling back through the door and in to the kitchen. He puts a bunch of hot dogs on a plate and throws some Kraft Singles on top. Then he tosses it in the microwave. He’s scarfing down obliviously when he spies that lady he’s in to. He saunters over there and makes a complete ass of himself, not to mention disgusting her with the shit he’s eating.
Who hasn’t seen something like these stories unfold in their real life? The government might actually gain some credibility with kids and be able to convince some of them to say no if they stuck to reminding them of negative effects that they know are true.
As for the harder drugs, I don’t even know how you approach that. Those people don’t care. There’s nobody in the world sitting in a bathroom somewhere moaning at the intense burn of the crystal meth that they just snorted and thinking “You don’t suppose crank is bad for me, do you?” I think that the general public is educated about what all that stuff does to you, and a whole lot of them don’t care.
Lc
Anyone should know to create effective anti-drug commercials you need to look at it from your audience’s PoV. eg. something like Lucki Charms suggested. Telling people something they know is false won’t work, obviously.
Why is it done? My theory is the adverts have to approved by somebody who doesn’t know anything about drugs (or someone elected by people who don’t) and can’t afford to admit to a stance anything less than “all drugs are the worst thing in the world”
Here’s how you make an anti-pot commerical. There’s a link on the right side of the page to a real audio file of the video to “Because I got high.” That’s what I call telling kids in plain language what smoking pot can do to your life.
One definite issue with having a realistic anti-pot commercial featuring somebody looking stupid is that there’s a frighteningly high chance of that stupid-looking person becoming an ironic stoner icon, complete with t-shirts and websites and such.
LC
The stupidest anti-drug commercial by far was the Racheal Leigh Cook “This is your brain… this is your brain on heroin… any questions?” commercial. Congrats, you’ve succeeded in making heroin extremely sexy.
I was tempted to start using just to try to meet her…
I remember reading an article in Entertainment Weekly or People or something that said in a survey this was believed to be the most effective anti-drug commercial ever.
I know I watched it intently everytime it came on…
There was one anti-marijuana commercial that was pretty truthful. It had a couple guys smoking it up and asked, “So you think if you smoke Marijuana nothing will happen to you?” Then the guy’s mom calls for him and asks when the hell he is going to get a job. The voiceover comes back and says, “You’re right.”
Along the lines of The Onion ariticle, “Study finds sitting around smoking marijuana leads to sitting around smoking marijuana.”
When I read the description of the ad in the OP I thought the son had SEX with his mother.
Now that would be disturbing.
This has to be the worst of the commercials:
Norm:
“Drug money funds terror.” I mean, why should I believe that?
Nick:
Because…it’s a fact?
Norm:
A fact?
Nick:
F.A.C.T. Fact.
Norm:
So, you’re saying that I should believe it because…it’s…true. That’s that’s your argument.
Nick:
It is true.
The Daily Show had an idea for an effective PSA. The correspondents and John stated how cool it was to do drugs and how great it was.
For some reason, this thread reminded me of a Comedy Central Presents episode with, I think, Nick something. This is what I remember him saying:
"Yeah, I don’t do drugs any more. Why are you laughing? I stopped smoking pot. My friends are like ‘You stopped? Dude, that sucks.’
“Yeah, it sucks remebering where I put things. The first week I was all 'Where did I put my keys, oh yeah, they’re in my pockets. How did I know that? I have superpowers. I am a god.”
If only I had a mother like that!
SP
Visions of “You, all right? I learned it from watching YOU!” are currently dancing in my head.
I will say that all those anti-marijuana commercials do liven up the wasteland that is Channel One. The kids at the three high schools I work at that show that program all get a good laugh from the PSAs.