I hate the one with the bong and the gun in the drawer. Idiot kids don’t have to be high to accidentally shoot a gun that
s left around, loaded, in an unlocked drawer.
While I find those Truth ads a little obnoxious, they’re better than anything that’s come before. The only warnings I’ve ever seen affect smokers are ones that mention impotence and involve breathing through a tube in one’s neck. But even then it’s just 'til the commercial’s over.
Actually, I thought the accidental-shooting commercial was more anti-gun than anti-drug.
There was one commercial a while back that I kinda liked, featuring a boy (about 12 or 13) smoking a joint and thinking about how cool it made him look to two girls who were walking by. The girls, in fact, were talking about what a stoned loser the boy was, but he was too oblivious to notice.
I’ve always despised attempts to make drinking or smoking tobacco look “cool” so this particular commercial struck a chord with me. Making an activity look stupid is more likely to have an discouraging effect than trying to make it look immoral.
I recently saw one that used the ‘show it three different ways’ premise:
- Guy and girl are smoking pot at a party. Girl sits down next to guy, starts laughing.
- Guy and girl smoking. Girl sits backwards next to guy facing the back of the couch. (I think to show how messed up she was, or something.)
- Guy and girl smoking. Girl sits down next to guy. Guy reaches over and starts fondling girl. (!) Girl weakly says “No…” and guy says “Shhh…” (!!)
Apparently smoking pot will cause boys/men to sexually assault women.
“Marijuana alters your perceptions” indeed.
No it wasn’t ‘show it three different ways’ premise. It was showing the girl getting messed up over the course of a couple of hours.
Oops!
I viewed it as a few possible scenarios. Still doesn’t make the message any better.
Dangers of Pot
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Some recent studies indicate it’s about three times as bad for your lungs as tobacco. This is balanced out by the fact that even a heavy smoker of marijuana probably smokes the equivalent of less than a pack a day with this formula.
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It can impair your judgement, especially if you don’t smoke it very often and still have a low tolerance. I would not want to ride in a car driven by someone who had just been smoking a little pot and who had never smoked it before (though I would prefer it to a drunk driver), but I feel entirely safe riding with someone who smoked regularly. My wife didn’t approve of me smoking pot, but she never objected to me driving high, and many people have told me I drive better that way.
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It can lead to you wasting a lot of time. Your sense of time is impaired, so you may think you have been playing a game for only 15 minutes or so when you have actually been playing for two hours. Also, when you are high it’s practically impossible to be bored, so you have no real motivation to go do something. I used to spend entire weekends doing nothing but sitting around my apartment smoking and watching TV.
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It makes a lot of people horny. Not me, particularly, but I’ve known lots of women who got really sexually aggressive when they were high. It could lead to you having sex with someone you normally wouldn’t have sex with.
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Sometimes, especially when you are thinking about something else, you will tend to go on autopilot when high and not pay attention to what you are doing. I’ve never had an accident as a result of being high, but there are a lot of times I was lost in thought and missed my exit, or took the wrong one, and didn’t notice until I was miles off course.
I still think it should be legalized, though. It’s hypocritical to ban any drug when alcohol is still legal - I have tried about every drug out there and in my honest opinion none were more impairing and dangerous than alcohol.
The Different Strokes episode that was famous because Nancy Regan, (someone with a lot of experienced getting f*cked up), told Gary to “say no”.
The “death stick” scenes in the newest Star Wars.
Just don’t limit to commercials.
Yes, I think that showing the loss of control from smoking would be a lot better than all of the insane stuff they show. When you’re a teenager the thought of maybe getting sick when you’re 60 isn’t exactly scary, but kowning about having a cold and NEEDING a smoke right now, enjoying a movie but NEEDING to rush out at the end and light up, being in class and NEEDING to sneak to the bathroom (and risk getting in trouble), and all of the other times where tobacco controls you would be. After all, one of the reasons to do something your parents don’t want you to do is to show that you’ve got control. Back when I was 16, if I had realized how much smoking was going to control me, I wouldn’t have started.
!!! :eek: !!!
There’s a reason why drinking alcohol is legal, but driving a car under the influence of alcohol isn’t!
I’ve read this thread twice looking for my favorite, and I can’t believe it’s not here.
Doesn’t anyone remember:
“Who taught you to do this?!”
“YOU, OKAY?! I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU!”
Apologies if that’s not verbatim - it’s been a few years.
You, alright? I learned it from watching you!!!
Damn you, Barrytown…
How about the commercial that was on around the same time as “You, alright!?”…the one where the father mumbling about how bad drugs were, then the camera pulls back to show he’s standing over his “son’s” grave, saying “I never thought I have to say that…to a thirteen-year-old…” Something about the way he said “thirteen-year-old” just made the ad ludicrous.
I never understood the point of the “You, alright!?” ad. If the father is a pothead, why’s he so upset about his kid smoking too? Even better is the voiceover at the end, “Parents who use drugs [ominous voice] have CHILDREN who use drugs.” Maybe it was just added in to make drug-free parents feel better.
. . . . One.
Telephone book, McLeod USA.
< < large image of leaf > >
“It makes you respond to ‘Hey, stupid’ ten seconds slower”.
Nobody would respond to being called stupid. I quit subscribing to an email list called This Is True because he kept calling people ‘caught’ in a victimless crime stupid. I had enough. Shoot people or poison them with Paraquat for smoking a mild leaf and call them stupid. Bitch for the pig squad (police department) tells an old man she’s fifteen and sex w/ her is okay and Randy Cassyhamm says geezer stupid.
. . . Two.
TV uh, thing.
Black boy unintroduced, on the screen suddenly, talking about some other strange people vaguely, you wonder who is and what is going on and how duz the image get into this box (telly),
and you realize over time they are telling you about some menace out there on some other streets in some other city, giving people that Martian Invasion feeling (general anxiety). In other words, telling you who to be friends with. - That’s what the boy says too.
The irony. Boy says Certain People tell him whom to hang out with, Boxy tells us whom to hang out with.
I just know some people will trust it. It’s on TV. Others will believe but not know where they got that feeling.
The commercial I hate is this one which is designed to look like a home movie of a emaciated cancer patient with her baby on her lap. The woman is making this home video of herself for her baby to remember her by after the mother is dead.
Why do I hate it?
- Too long
- Too sappy
- They ALWAYS show it at dinner time, and nonsmokers should not have to be subjected to images of dying smokers at dinner.
- It’s completely fake. I gleefully watched a local news story talking about how real cancer survivors were outraged that they faked this supposed “home video” for their propaganda.
—Its funny, with the majority of most of these anti-drug commercials, you can substitute alcohol for the drugs and the commercials would still ring true. Yet alcohol is legal.—
It’s more cynical than that. It isn’t just that alcohol could be substituted: but that 99 times out of a hundred, it IS what is responsible for such judgement-impaired hang-ups.
That’s what’s so cynically sickening about the Partnership. Not just that they are associated with alcohol companies, but that they don’t really give a god damn about what drugs REALLY end up killing people the most: the REAL risks.
This would be like a group sponsored by gun manufacturers who are worried about children killing each other running ads informing kids about the danger of nunchucks… when the dangers of guns are astronomically more important.
—My wife didn’t approve of me smoking pot, but she never objected to me driving high, and many people have told me I drive better that way.—
They did studies in the UK that substantiated this: that high drivers actually seem to be safer drivers for some reason (perhaps because they rarely speed, and are not aggressive). As a famous comic observed, the most common collision that pot smoking drivers experience is hitting the unopened garage door at two miles and hour.
Alcohol and marijuana have very different effects. As someone has already pointed out, there have been studies that showed that people under the influence of marijuana often drive better.
While giggling madly and munching Doritos. Yeah, I believe it. :rolleyes:
My nominations for most ridiculous anti-drug ads are either the new Nick/Norm ads (“It’s true?” “It IS true.”) or the old standby with the fried egg (“This is your brain on drugs”). Both simplifications to the point of meaninglessness.
I hate, hate, HATE those “It’s true 'cause I say so” ads. They remind me of Chick Tracts:
“You are evil.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are. It says so right here in the Bible.”
“Holy Shit! I am evil!”
I kinda like the Parents: The anti-drug ads. The the ones that are aimed at parents. The basic message is: speak to your children. Know where they go, know who they are with, know what they do. This is good advice no matter what the topic-- drugs, sex, bad haircuts. . .