Pubdate: Sat, 22 Nov 2014
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2014 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Elizabeth Renzetti
Page: A2

IF ANTI-DRUG PSAS DON'T ACTUALLY WORK, WHY ARE GOVERNMENTS SO HIGH ON THEM?

The history of anti-drug public-service ads is so long and 
illustrious that it's hard to pick a favourite from the lot. I have a 
particular affection for the New Zealand commercial that features a 
man in a club bathroom literally removing a piece of his brain, 
chopping it in a tiny bloody line and hoovering it up his nose. But 
then there is also the anti-methamphetamine ad from the United 
States, in which a doleful voice warns would-be tweekers, "This is 
where she used to be a cheerleader. This is the sink where she 
started pulling out her eyebrows."

Is there a teenager alive who would respond to this Reefer Madness 
2014 with anything other than snorts of derision? Research has shown 
that anti-drug PSAs are useless at achieving their stated aim - 
namely, keeping Kayden and Jaden off the bong or the pipe. So why do 
they continue to get made?

Why, for example, is the federal government spending $7-million on a 
series of ads, roundly mocked by their target audience, which warn of 
the dangers of marijuana and pharmaceutical drugs? The first 
commercial shows a brain as a series of pipes admitting a stream of 
pot smoke. As the smoke wafts along (surely a nod to the classic 
"this is your brain on drugs" advert), a solemn voice intones 
warnings about marijuana's effect on young users: Pot is much 
stronger than it used to be; smoking can decrease IQ.

That last claim is contentious at best, as many people have noted in 
sarcastic responses on social media, and is based on a limited study. 
"Smoking marijuana," the narrator says sternly. "It can damage a teen 
for life." The brain is pictured at the end as a smouldering ruin. 
Well, that'll put them on the straight and narrow! All head shops 
must close henceforth.

The problem with these anti-drug PSAs is multifold. For one thing, 
they can actually increase kids' curiosity about drugs. They provide 
a sense that everyone is high all the time, with the unintended 
consequence of making it seem more common behaviour than it is. And, 
in treating the issue of drug experimentation like a scene from Saw, 
they turn off kids who know, from experience, that it is nothing like 
that. Billy is not usually left face-down in the snow bleeding from 
all orifices.

Young people are suspicious of the motives of authority figures, 
especially governments. It's as if we are all the teacher from 
Peanuts, droning wah-wah-wah-wah at them while they get on with the 
important business of their lives, like texting about who's hot. As 
Carson Wagner, an American academic who studies drug ads, told NPR 
last year, "Kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. 
Because they'll begin to ask the question, 'Well, from where is this 
information coming?' "

They're right to be skeptical, because the aim of these ads is not so 
much public health as political strategizing. The Conservative 
government launched its anti-drug campaign in 2007 and has since 
foisted some truly dreadful anti-drug paranoia on the public in the 
name of bolstering get-tough credibility with its supporters. (One of 
the ads showed a druggie girl cutting herself and covered in 
festering blisters, like some William Burroughs nightmare. Those ads, 
sponsored by our government, were cited in a BBC report about how 
useless and outdated scare tactics are in abstinence campaigns.)

Three of Canada's main medical groups distanced themselves from the 
Conservatives' latest anti-drug ads this summer. (I'm amazed those 
groups were consulted at all; I thought the government relied on a 
Magic 8 Ball for most of its policy decisions.)

"The educational campaign has now become a political football on 
Canada's marijuana policy," the College of Family Physicians, the 
Canadian Medical Association and the Royal College of Physicians and 
Surgeons of Canada said in a joint statement explaining why they 
wouldn't be participating in the Conservatives' ad campaign. "We did 
not, and do not, support or endorse any political messaging or 
political advertising on this issue."

Of course it's a political issue. The anti-drug ads may come wrapped 
in the soft rhetoric of public-health advice, but they also come from 
the same party that released flyers saying, "Justin Trudeau's 
Liberals have no plan to create jobs, but they do have a plan to 
legalize marijuana ... Their plan to legalize marijuana will make it 
more available to minors."

Anti-drug ads have little benefit, apart from scoring political 
points and providing a target for online snarking. "All the research 
suggests they don't work. They are not cost-effective," Prof. Harry 
Sumnall of Liverpool John Moores University told the BBC last year. 
An academic review of the studies around anti-drugs PSAs in 2011 
concluded that they were ineffectual: "The dissemination of 
anti-illicit-drug PSAs may have a limited impact on the intention to 
use illicit drugs or the patterns of illicit-drug use among target 
populations."

Translated, I'm pretty sure that means, "Spend your money elsewhere, 
buddy, if you want to lessen the harm caused by drugs." But this 
isn't about young people's health; it's about their parents' votes.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom