Partnership for a Drug-Free America

An organization that broadcasts ads designed to reduce demand for illegal drugs. They started out with provocative ones: "this is your brain on drugs", for example, but they also had ads with "factual" disinformation (quickly discontinued). Oddly, PDFA has been funded by pharmaceutical, tobacco, and alcohol interests. Processed food can be more harmful than tobacco; Tylenol can be more harmful than cannabis. When will we see the ads? Of course, TV rots the brain anyway.

The fact is that getting people off of illegal drugs is a good thing for the tobacco and alcohol companies. Why? Because if those people aren't spending all that money on the expensive illegal stuff, they can be spending it on the legal, government-endorsed chemical entertainment. It's all for furthering their own interests - they don't really care about the health of people...

Even the Partnership for a Drug Free America is beginning to soften its message:

The latest commercial (early 2001) aired by the Partnership depicts a group of kids in their mid-teens socializing in a suburban garage, engaging in mind-bendingly inane conversation¹. Enter another kid with a doobie concealed in his backpack. Like the courteous stoner he is, he passes the number and a lighter to the kid seated to his left, wordlessly communicating his sentiment². The camera follows the joint as it is passed from kid to kid in the circle in a single unbroken shot. They each give a look of disgust to the reefer and pass it along without lighting it. Eventually, it returns to its originator, who shrugs and returns it safely to his backpack, presumably for later use.

Unlike the infamous and flatly intolerant "This is your brain" installment, the message here is clearly:

• Do not try to get your moron friends high. This will make you as stupid as they are. The kids in this commercial are clearly not very intelligent or interesting; see footnote 1 for evidence thereof.
• If you must smoke pot, do so alone, preferably in the woods, where you will be unmolested by your friends' parents. This is probably why they don't want to light up in the first place. In my day, if we got high in our parents' garages...
• Always pass to the left.
• It is okay to abstain from pot, and it is also okay to associate with known drug users, even if only in hopes of reforming their warped minds.

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¹: A direct quote: "So would you rather eat, like, a maggot-filled pie, or go to school naked?" The group responds, in unison, "Naked!"
²: "Come, brothers and sisters, share an altered state of consciousness with me. Then, in about half an hour, we can raid your mom's pantry. She still keeps an economy-size box of Goldfish around, right?"