ABOVE THE INFLUENCE ADS TARGET YOUNGER AUDIENCE, BELITTLE LEVEL OF MATURITY

If I greatly exaggerated the dishonesty of a known liar, would it make
sense to believe me even though I'm dishonest because my message is
generally correct?

Unfortunately, the AboveTheInfluence.com ads make as much sense as the
previous sentence. More unfortunately, they aren't alone.

In one ad, a teenager locks the door to his room and gets out a bag of
weed. The story takes a weird twist when he builds a cocoon around
himself and wakes up as a middle-aged man. You hear his mom's voice
yell, "Marty, did you take out the garbage like your father told you?"

The Sunny Side of Truth includes an ad in which a boy and girl do a
song and dance over a list of all the people allegedly killed by
tobacco in the past year. Aside from the fact that the song is
annoying, it is insulting to my intelligence to be told about the
evils of drug use by a pink dragon and a unicorn.

While the ads are targeted at kids, being 15 doesn't mean you like
being patronized.

There are plenty of legitimate facts to tell kids about drug use. In
2006, a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management reported
that a whopping 84 percent of employers require applicants to pass a
drug test, with 39 percent performing random mandatory testing after
that. You think the economy isn't looking so hot now? Try only being
able to apply for 16 percent of the jobs.

Maybe Marty wasted his life and lives with his mom because he can't
get a paycheck.

A 1997 study found that homeless people are eight times more likely to
abuse drugs than the average population. Of course this begs the
question - are they homeless because of drug abuse and other factors,
or do they abuse drugs because they are homeless? Interestingly, a
study done by a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine M.D. finds that drug
abuse doesn't increase after a person becomes homeless, and actually
may even decrease. While this isn't a smoking gun, if presented in the
proper context, it would certainly raise some eyebrows.

It's odd that groups like The Sunny Side of Truth accuse tobacco
companies of intentionally lying to consumers, instead of giving us
the straight dope. How can you expect kids to take your message
seriously when you have goofy commercials with girls that look
"smooshed" by all the pressure to do drugs?

While the metaphor is clear, get a grip - smoking pot will not cause
you to shrink to one-third your height. Gross exaggerations like these
undermine the credibility of the entire message. There are plenty of
100% legitimate facts to pass on. If teen drug use isn't a joke, don't
make it one.