AN ANTI-DRUG ADVERTISING GENIUS IS BORN

By now, everyone has seen and complained about the asinine new line of
"Reefer Madness"-style anti-drug propaganda ads that have been on TV
lately. In case you need clarification, these are the ads that show a
terrible tragedy happening as a result of marijuana use, followed by
ominous phrases like "Marijuana can impair your judgement" or "It's more
harmful than we all thought."

First of all, we have to talk about their catch phrase: "Marijuana can
impair your judgement." Is this news to anyone? That's part of the reason
people smoke - so they can make judgement-impaired decisions like eating an
extra-large pizza in one sitting and constantly watching Cartoon Network.

Anyway, to sum up the series of ads, if you smoke pot, you will, in the
near future, probably get cancer, get raped or rape someone, shoot your
best friend, go to jail, run over little Susie with your car, kill your
little brother while driving high, get knocked up and help fund terrorists
(which, let's face it, makes you directly responsible for Sept. 11).

The now infamous terrorism-themed ads, one of which premiered during the
Super Bowl, are especially amusing and disturbing for one important reason.
Forget the fact that the government spent $3.4 million on two 30-second ad
spots, which ironically, were watched mostly by people who are too busy
punishing their livers and brains with their drug of choice, good old legal
American beer, to actually pay attention. And forget the fact that it is
the War on Drugs and the illegality of drugs, not the use or even purchase
of drugs, that help to fund terrorist activities. The real failure of this
ad is that there is absolutely no way you are convincing a teenage kid that
by buying a dime bag of crappy pot from his friend Steve, he is in any way
contributing to terrorism or violence.

OK, OK, I'll admit - if you are buying large quantities of heroin or
cocaine from foreign sources, you might be somehow funneling money back to
the bad guys, so all you naughty kingpins out there should knock it off.

What the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign is completely missing is
that to get to kids, you can't try to use guilt, fear of punishment (legal
or parental), or even death as incentives. Kids just don't buy it. All you
ad people, pay close attention to this next part: A few years ago, a
company that manufactured a household cleanser found that a lot of kids
were using their product as an inhalant despite labels bearing prominent
warnings like "May cause DEATH," "You will DIE INSTANTLY if you inhale
this" and "Seriously, you will totally, like, melt like the Nazis at the
end of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and die if you inhale this crap." Despite
their severe warnings, the huffing continued. When the company asked its
lawyer what to do, he told them that they should change the label to
include the warning "May cause hair loss and facial disfigurement" even
though the product did neither of these things. As the phony warning
appeared, reports of huffing immediately decreased.

To most adolescents, physical appearance and being sexually attractive are
much more important than any idle threats of immediate death. Anti-drug ads
should appeal to teenage narcissism, not lofty notions of responsibility
and danger.

Well I'm sick of seeing the good people at the Anti-Drug Campaign fall on
their asses when it comes to reaching out to the kids (D.A.R.E., I'm
looking in your direction), so I have decided that instead of just
criticizing their horribly, horribly ineffective ads, I will do my part and
pitch some new, fresh ad concepts that are tailored to teen audiences and
more, to use a phrase that appears on their website, "hip" (I challenge you
to show me more concrete proof that they are painfully out-of-touch with
their target audience). Here goes ... I'm allowed to lie, right? Whew,
thank God. This would be hard if I had to tell the complete truth.

The setting: a dimly lit bedroom. A woman lies on her bed, looking
affectionate but disappointed. A man sits on the corner of the bed, head in
his hands. Then, we see on the screen, "If you smoke pot, you won't be able
to get it up ... Harmless?" It'll work wonders.

You don't like that one? Ooh, ooh, I've got a better one.

A teenage boy stands in a harshly-lit bathroom in his boxers, staring in
the mirror. He pulls the waistband of his shorts forward, takes a peek down
at his gear and screams. Then we see, "Smoking pot makes your penis small.
Seriously, it'll shrink right up like you just swam in Lake Michigan in
February ... Harmless?" That'll knock 'em dead, I tell you, dead.

Not wild about that one either, huh? Well, the possibilities for preying on
teen self-consciousness are endless, from decreased breast size to having
to wear braces longer. ("Marijuana can keep your teeth from straightening.")

No good? OK, I suppose that instead of using wild exaggeration and scare
tactics to bully kids into obeying, you could try telling them the real
harm of smoking pot. First, I don't know how accurate the government's
figures on marijuana's tar content are, but I'll admit, any activity in
which you inhale smoke into your lungs is somewhat bad for you. If you sat
over a pile of burning leaves in your backyard on a regular basis, you
would probably get a similar amount of crud in your lungs. The other major
problem with pot was summed up nicely in an episode of "South Park" a few
weeks ago: "Pot makes you feel fine with being bored ... If you smoke pot,
you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything." ... Harmless?