Pubdate: Thu, 26 Mar 2015
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Don Butler
Page: A9

FOCUS GROUPS APPROVED OF 'POLITICAL' ANTI-DRUG ADS

Focus groups consulted last fall were keen on a $7-million anti-drug 
marketing campaign Health Canada was about to launch even though 
medical groups refused to endorse it because they thought it was too political.

The taxpayer-funded 10 week advertising campaign, which wrapped up in 
late December, ran at the same time as Conservative radio ads that 
attacked Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau for promising to legalize and 
regulate marijuana.

The Canadian Medical Association, the College of Family Physicians of 
Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons refused to 
participate in the campaign, describing it last August as a 
"political football on Canada's marijuana policy."

But parents and teens in 10 focus groups who were shown versions in 
September of the campaign's two 30-second television ads - one 
focusing on marijuana use and the other on prescription drug abuse by 
teens - appear to have raised no such objections.

In fact, says a report by Harris/Decima, which did the research, 
parents deemed the ads appropriate for the government of Canada and 
found the information in them important and even shocking.

One ad stated that marijuana is 300- to 400-per-cent stronger than it 
was 30 years ago. It used a glass brain made of tubes to illustrate 
its message that smoking the drug "can seriously harm a teen's 
developing brain."

The notion that today's marijuana is much stronger "was new to some 
participants and nearly all found it compelling," the Harris/Decima 
report says. "Many parents commented this was important information 
for them and that they could raise it in conversation with their teen."

Parents and teens also preferred a version of the ad that began with 
a narrator saying "smoking a joint" can seem harmless.

Focus group participants said using "joint" made the tone of the ad 
more casual and conversation-ready. Many thought terms such as "pot" 
and "weed" would also work well.Marijuana, they said, was "the kind 
of term used by those in authority rather than by youth."

The other ad, which stated that more than 80,000 Canadian teens had 
used prescription drugs to "get high" in the previous year, also 
tested quite well with all groups, the report says.

"It was often met with a strong reaction, since participants 
consistently described (prescription drug abuse) as a very troubling 
issue and, for many, it was new and shocking," it says.
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