The anti-drug campaign

[xenxander]

http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0732/index.html

 

this article made me reflect on my youth and how right it was, from turtles to G.I. Joe, to He-Man.

 

almost every cartoon I watched always had an anti-drug sentiment at the end, and it was always reiterated in stand-alone commercials.

 

So my question is:

Did such compaigns like these really have a positive effect? Or is the reason we don't see them any longer, thrown blatantly over the networks, is becasue someone realized they were quite .... ah.... stupid? *chuckles*

 

edit:

stupid fingers!!! sory for the "anit".. we all figure it should be "anti"... -_- *sigh* can this be altered?

[hoots7]

http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0732/index.html

 

this article made me reflect on my youth and how right it was, from turtles to G.I. Joe, to He-Man.

 

almost every cartoon I watched always had an anti-drug sentiment at the end, and it was always reiterated in stand-alone commercials.

 

So my question is:

Did such compaigns like these really have a positive effect? Or is the reason we don't see them any longer, thrown blatantly over the networks, is becasue someone realized they were quite .... ah.... stupid? *chuckles*

 

edit:

stupid fingers!!! sory for the "anit".. we all figure it should be "anti"... -_- *sigh* can this be altered?

 

Well I don't know if was the corny adds (Just Say NO!) on TV, video games or that I just didn't want to be a strung-out loooosser pot-head on drugs.

 

The simple fact is that my generation of kids did have less addicts, less smokers (not drinkers) & teenage pregnancy was down.

It really helped I think that we had a Kick @ss President named Ronald Reagan who we could look up to.

[batlham]

Not sure they worked. I just ignore the end of GI-Joe when they gave the cheesy lesson.

My sister and I never have tried drugs.

However, I learned not to do drugs from a bad morphine reaction after my first surgery...nearly killed me. And I will never forget hallucinations either....A fourth grader should never have a bad trip :D

 

The friends I had in high school, that never did drugs, had one thing in common...

Parents that were involved in the lives of their kids.

The druggie kids always had parents that never gave a care about where or what their children are doing.

 

P.S.

Why is the post xenxander did earlyer been reported???

[ninja_lord666]

According to the ample evidence supplied by Penn and Teller on their show BS, the War on Drugs has had nothing but negative effects. Drug use has increased since this 'war' started. Drug dealers have become more populous. More drug dealers mean more drug users. It's really quite simple. By banning all drugs, the government created a black market. Black market are very profitable. Some of the riches people are drug dealers. In fact, there is so much money to be had dealing drugs, that drug rings are popping up everywhere. There is also the teen rebellion stage. Teens love to rebel, and since drugs are illegal, they see that as a great way to rebel, especially when there's one or more drug dealers available to them. The only way the government can even stand a chance against drugs is to legalise them. Legalising drugs eliminates the black market, eliminating the profit. If the government takes all those drugs and just pops them in stores, the price can be regulated like other products thus making drug dealing no more profitable than smuggling aspirin. Then, all they need to do is stick a bunch of arsenic into the drugs thereby killing all the druggies. No more druggies means no more druggies. How can that get any simpler? Of course they don't tell us about the arsenic, because that would just create another black market for 'clean' drugs. They just lie to us saying it was the drugs that did that. Drugs kill people; that's not wrong. There have been many people who died from all kinds of drugs (except pot, but that's another story).

 

Watch Penn and Teller for the full story.

[Jumonji]

Before the war on drugs, back in the late 60's and early 70's, drugs were popular with the liberal youth counterculture (i.e., "hippies.") Tune in, turn on, and drop out. Drugs were viewed as a way to see reality in a more truthful way - a more authentic way of experiencing reality. But the powers-that-be, didn't like this. They didn't want youths questioning the reality that the politicians had created - people should just get jobs in the factories and consume mass quantities so they had to work harder, etc. Hence, the war on drugs.

 

However, as Penn and Teller point out, the war on drugs has not stopped drug use - but what it did was shift the culture of druggies. Instead of suberban enlightened college dropout hippies with their love beads tripping on LSD with their "we wanna be better and bring you with us" mentality, we now have crackheads in their "screw you" mentality robbing and murdering each other to support their addictions. 

 

Thank you, warmongers. Great job.

[xenxander]

I self-reported my message because I mistyped the title as "anit" instead of "anti", so thanks to a helpful moderator it is now fixed :) yay.

 

I can't say hippies had it "right". They were (and still are) a large source of pollution - water, land, and eye. And that they preached "free love" and "sharing" all the time meant they expected hand-outs and basically to 'coast' the system.

 

I always thought the anti-drug things were very corny but in some ways had a good effect. I never have tried drugs and I know how they chemically alter the body and mind - how? well I paid attention in health class *smirks* and I 'stayed in school'.

 

I'm sure I rebelled as a teen, but my rebellion was more so playing my SNES wen I was supposed to be doing homework :P

but despite my gaming needs (NES, SNES, and the local arcade <~~ damn I just don't see them as much anymore! :( *sniffles*), I did manage to pull through with the "A/B Honor roll" thingie :thumbsup:

 

I think in general they were an 'okay' thing, but it was always so 'overboard' that it may have worked for the younger kids, but not so much for the ones who were already in their teens (though being born in 1980 means by 1993 / 1994 most of those add thingies were off the air anyway).

[Jumonji]

...I can't say hippies had it "right". They were (and still are) a large source of pollution - water, land, and eye. And that they preached "free love" and "sharing" all the time meant they expected hand-outs and basically to 'coast' the system.

 

I agree that the hippies didn't have it quite right, but you're buying in to the revisionist view of what the movement was all about. Sure, "free love" usually meant "free sex" to the guys - but peace, love, and living off the land (as in communal organic farming, not as in agri-rapists) was the ideal that many aspired to. The baby-boomer polluters are not the hippie legacy, far from it. The hippies were in rebellion to that mind-set then just as much as the greenies are today.  (Trust me - I was there. A bit young to participate, but I knew what was going on.)

 

-Jumonji

[kungfubellydancer]

In my opinion, one important factor to the rise in drug use is lack of negative consequences. People in general in the US aren't nearly as religious as 100 years ago, and also that punishment for drug use could be just being in prison. I've watched alot of shows about drug users, and it appears that going to rehab is far greater punishment than prison, except that rehabs kick out the people that act up, allowing them to go back to a world of drug use. To drug users, prison is just prison, you get out, and you get the drugs. Since people have less moral values, they don't fear a god-entity or some other sort of religious figure, or don't know what's right and wrong, don't believe in Hell or Heaven, that sort of thing, so they are lost and don't have see a true meaning in life. How many teens do you see go to church on Sunday, if they ever do, nod their heads to everything the pastor says, leave, and go home to get laid a few times by the girl from across the street? Doesn't the pastor say, "no sex before marriage?" My point is that having no real fear for anything or anybody can have an effect on drug use. Less religion = more drug use. It's nearly impossible to flush out the drug use entirely. When I was growing up, I never had alcohol or drugs because I was raised in such a strong, religious family. I have never been drunk, never suffered a hangover, never been to jail, never spoken to a cop besides on school grounds during speeches, thanks to religion, and knowing that I will be severely punished if I ever did, and knowing that I would shame myself in front of my family and community. If only the concept of community and family were stronger these days, alot of these things wouldn't happen.

[xenxander]

Ah, just a thought - don't talk about religeon.

 

this was about the 80's and early 90's 'don't do drugs' commercials and messages, and if anyone remembered them and/if anyone thought they were a sucess or a failure or had any insight / ideas on why they stop airing them.

 

That was it.

[WoogieMonster]

Those so called "truth" commercials are completely worthless. I consider every one of them an intellectual insult, and if I had the ability, I would smoke everyday, and I could honestly say that those ridiculous ads would be the reason I did it.

 

For the record I don't smoke, not because of G.I. Joe, not because of that stupid blue screen on the arcade machines, and certainly not because of 'truth.' I don't smoke because it's expensive, you get skinny, your food tastes weird and drinking is easily 1000 times more fun. Oh, and when I was a teen I kissed a woman who smoked and it was so disgusting to me that my penis stopped working for a week. Put that in a commercial.