This is Your Brain on PSA's
As a teen in today's America, I am bombarded everyday with drugs. Whether it's the crazy guy on the corner, a blockbuster movie, hanging out with my friends, or sitting around watching TV, drugs are everywhere. In response to this, the government and media have gone to great lengths in the ongoing war on drugs. I wonder how with such focus from the media and government drug use still flourishes and what possible effects the drug prevention service announcements have on the masses.Anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs) started in the 1950s but it was not until the 1980s that it focused so much on the youth. For children growing up in the late 80s anti-drug PSAs were as much a part of daily life as Silver Spoons and Full House. With many yuppie parents in the work force, this latch key generation was guided by Television. Post playground cartoons were often interrupted by messages from the Partnership for a Drug Free America. "Just say no" - "Winners don't do drugs" - "This is your brain on drugs"- all of these catch phrases are well known to any American who own a Television. For 90s youth anti-drug PSAs made way into the classroom via Channel One airing "What's your anti-drug?" every commerc
In this commercial the man boldly looks into the camera says, "This is your brain on drugs," then cracks an egg into the frying pan where immediately it begins to fry. If socially threatening strategies like "the result of drug use is rejection by friends and society" could ever be disproven, they have been done so by the President himself: certainly he was not rejected my society. Fear arousal was more a strategy used in older drug-prevention campaigns such as the infamous "Reefer Madness" PSA of the 60s. A segment of the population that seeks out novel, unique and dangerous stimuli would not be affected by social threats, because if society's opinions matters that much to them, they wouldn't be defined as the skydiving thrill seeking people in the first place. For example, social threats have been found to be more effective than physical threats on intention to use drugs (Schoenbachler and Whittler) but one would expect social threats to be less effective in high sensation seekers. Most of my research as of yet has been to review the tactics used in anti-drug commercials and the flaws of contradiction they have. Flaws though have been found in the drug-prevention PSA strategies. While I gathered my resources, no help was given to me by the Internet to my surprise. I am still currently working on interviews to see how effective to them anti-drug PSAs are in their message. Social threat appeals have been found to be more effective than physical threats appeals (Scholenbachler and Whittler 29), perhaps because adolescents are very concerned with the opinions of their peers. The "Just say no" logo is all that follows. Searching with keywords like "anti-drug commercials/ads/campaigns", I came up with many sites about government legislation ad newspaper articles criticizing the ads but nothing about anti-drug ads throughout history. In this example, a physical threat with low harm (a frying egg) is integrated with a recommended coping response (say no to drugs). A physically threatening campaign is best exemplified by the "This is your brain on drugs" PSA. Massachusetts and Arizona have both passed laws permitting the medical use of marijuana: physically threatening strategies about the dangers of drugs will now be even more difficult to uphold, seeing as how now marijuana is approved by doctors themselves.
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