http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/10/02/Consumers/anti_drug_ads031002 Anti-drug ads can lead to increased drug usage: professor Last Updated Thu, 02 Oct 2003 12:05:00 WINNIPEG - An American researcher visiting Winnipeg Wednesday said U.S. anti-drug campaigns can actually make more kids try drugs. Martin Fishbein reached his conclusion after asking youths across the United States about the effectiveness of anti-drug commercials, such as "Just Say No" and "The Anti-Drug." Fishbein, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said the ads can make kids more interested in trying mar1juana and other drugs. "The more kids are being exposed to these ads, the more prevalent they think drug use is," said Fishbein. "And the more they think that other people are using drugs, the more they think they should be using it too, and the more they intend to use them," he said. Laura Gossen of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba said the anti-drug media campaigns do have their pitfalls. She said drug prevention programs should have more than a simple catchphrase in order to work. "We would argue that just simply taking an 'Anti-drug' or a 'Just Say No' approach does not, in fact, work with everybody," said Gossen. "We know that. So we have to do more than that," she said. Gossen says parents talking with their children about drugs and peer pressure are among the best ways to address concerns about drug use.
In order to be effective to lower drug abuse in kids, we must speak about drugs with a unified voice. If we are to actually accomplish the goal of wiping out drug use by teens and younger children, adults must have a drug policy that 99.9% of the people out there can point to as rational. The message our unified voice should have is that drug use is extremely dangerous and should not be attempted under any circumstances until adulthood. Of course drug use by adults has consequences too, but if we create a system that makes it extraordinarily difficult for kids to get drugs under, the vast majority of those people will make responsible decisions regarding drug use if they are properly educated BEFORE they begin using drugs. If every single person knew what AA and residential chemical dependancy treatment centers teach before they decided to use drugs (including alcohol), we would see huge declines in rates of use. The key is breaking the black market that provides drugs to kids to the point that they can get illegal substances more easily than alcohol (as was found in a study in 2000). The only way to do away with the black market is to regulate the sales of these substances. If we create a strong enough regulatory structure, we could make it extremely difficult to pass drugs to kids by slanting the risk/reward ratio. If adults could get drugs legally and selling to kids got you ten years with no time off, who is the pusher going to sell to? We would see the end of black market drugs just as we saw the end of black market alcohol after Prohibition was repealed. We can reduce drug use if we approach the problem scientifically.
On a similar note, I always thought that the Phillip Morris ads about not smoking as kids are a joke. I guess they are required to pay for them, but it seems like there is one that says: "Don't yell or argue with you kids about not smoking, just talk to them in a reasonable manner," or something like that. I just thought...yeah, that'll work on a teenager smoking...if all the parent is going to do is give them a "talking to" then what teenager in this country would be afraid of that. Anyways, I also thought that they were ALL lame commercials and that kids might smoke just because the commercials against it were lame. I thought that Phillip Morris was actually pushing kids to smoke with lame anti smoking ads that they are required to make by the courts. Irony.
I don't know. I have found that my kids have responded well (so far) to a more rational approach rather than scare tactics or whatnot. Of course, we started imparting a moral framework very early. I think that helps.
The rational approach is the only one that truly works with kids. They can see through hypocracy and are impacted by double messages more than anyone understands. We need to get to the point that an insignificant percentage of minors uses drugs. Once that happens, drug use as a whole will go down dramatically. We can build toward a drug free America if we approach the issue from a different perspective.
I can remember sitting in science class in fourth grade at the height of the "Just Say No" stuff, learning in our state-required drug unit of the course about how LSD made you hallucinate wildly and all this stuff. I remember thinking, "Man! I wish I could know what that's like... it sounds so weird." Later I realized I could easily find out. I figure no matter what people are told about drugs, it's going to have a certain appeal to some people. It's important to get the word out that they're addictive and dangerous, but the problem is just never going away. Minimization is the best we can hope for.
[/i] Gossen says parents talking with their children about drugs and peer pressure are among the best ways to address concerns about drug use. [/i] That's great if you have parents, I guess.
Talks from adults, parents or not, would have a lot more impact if all adults were giving the same messages. As it is, kids get different messages from everyone and the messages they should be listening to (the ones telling them to avoid using drugs) are ignored because they are perceived as being inaccurate. If we change our strategy, we can keep our kids from using drugs.
"I turned to pot thinking it would solve my problems. But you know what? The only thing it fixed was my life." - Geoffrey Jellineck
Your example sends an incredibly mixed message. You are saying we should tell kids "drug use is extremely dangerous and should not be attempted under any circumstances until adulthood" If I were a kid I would think "if drugs are so extremely[\i]dangerous, why can adults use them?" "Why are drugs dangerous for a 17 year old, but not for a 21 year old?" What is wrong with the unified message of "don't use drugs"?
Because children do not have the physical or mental capacity to make those kinds of decisions for themselves. Physically, kids are still developing, creating a serious situation with growth, development, and maturation. Kids can do some pretty nasty harm to themselves by using drugs (including alcohol) before adulthood. There are also some studies that indicate that kids who use drugs (again, including alcohol) have a SERIOUS physical predisposition to abuse and addiction. Add all this to the changes that go on in the biochemistry of a teenager through puberty and we have some unpredictable responses to drug use. Ritalin, an ADD drug used to calm children, acts as a stimulant in adults. When a child takes a drug, nobody can be absolutely sure what the actual effects will be. Mentally, we are forcing children to make decisions about the most dangerous chemicals in the world when they are in middle and high school. Add to that the fact that the information they believe typically comes from their peers and we have a situation where kids are convincing other kids that the consequences of drug use are minimal when the opposite is true. Kids do not have the mental capacity to make rational decisions about things as important as what substances to put into their bodies. We have seen exactly how well the attempt to use that message works. It is a flawed message because a large percentage of the adult population does not believe the simplistic "just say no" messages. Kids REALLY don't believe it, especially in advertising, as shown by the results of the study quoted in the first post. You are proposing more of the same 'ol, same 'ol and it should be clear by now, after 30 years, that this approach is not working. Half of our young people have used illegal drugs before they leave high school and if we continue with the status quo, young people will become addicted and die at the same rates every year. We can reduce abuse and addiction if we have an education and healthcare based drug policy.
I still don't see how telling a kid that something is incredibly dangerous, but it is O.K. to do it if you are an adult, is not a mixed message. Drug use, regardless of your age is dangerous. Regardless of regulation it is dangerous. Again, why are drugs incredibly dangerous to a 17 year old, but not to a 21 year old?
It wouldn't be a mixed message because EVERY adult would be able to give the same message with a straight face and without having to lie about their own drug use. ALL adults would be saying that underage drug use is dangerous, reckless, and could very well lead to addiction and death. Nobody in their right mind would make the claim that drug use by a teenager is in any way safe. We should be pushing kids to put off even making the decision about whether or not to use drugs until they are adults and have the capacity to make those kinds of decisions. The difference with adults is that they have the capacity to make rational decisions for themselves and we should treat adults like they have that capacity. Of course drug use is dangerous for adults, but it should be obvious by now that we are not going to get them to stop using drugs through prohibition. Instead, we should rely on education and healthcare professionals to reduce drug use by adults. Once people are waiting until adulthood to try drugs, education will tend to move them away from the REALLY dangerous ones like cocaine and heroin. I would say that there is less of a danger to a 21 year old because they are more capable of making a rational, reasoned decision than a 17 year old. I also pointed out the physical and mental characteristics that make drug use by teens more dangerous than use by adults in my last post. Drug are incredibly dangerous (for everyone) and our drug policy should, above all other considerations, take them out of the hands of our children. Once kids cannot get drugs, overall drug use will decline. If an adult who has been completely educated as to the effects of a particular drug decides to injest that poison, the government's role is to assure that what they are using is regulated and taxed to pay for the resulting social costs. Do you actually think that our drug policy does anyone besides politicians any good?
Are you ignoring me, bobreck? What good does our current drug policy do? It increases the violence inherent in the system (help, help I'm being repressed!). It corrupts vast numbers of people in a huge variety of industries. It introduces the idea of drugs to kids at a very early age. It has not reduced drug use a whit since the 1970s despite having spend upwards of a trillion dollars on it. What good has come of prohibition and why should we continue it? If nobody has a good answer, shouldn't we look for a rational drug policy? We can keep our kids drug free if we treat the problem rationally rather than hysterically.