I was just watching television (more a background noise thing) and a PSA [public service announcement] came on. It got me thinking. Now thankfully the PSA’s on drugs are far better than the original ‘Just say no’ commercials with Mrs. Nancy Regan. Those were a joke, providing humor and no reason to stop anything. I mean no offense to Mrs. Reagan but her commercials were vastly out of touch with anyone I knew growing up and everyone I spoke to at the time agreed. They were almost as funny as the ‘Where’s the beef’ and ‘I’ve fallen and can’t get up’ commercials. If you’re not a thirty-something you have no idea what I mean, but they were funny.
The Regan commercials were quickly replaced by the ever famous ‘This is your brain on drugs’ television spots. While better, they tended to make people more hungry than anything else. Today we have PSA’s that show unmotivated, deflated, truncated kids or a group of losers sitting on a couch as others do activities around them. Probably the best group of these style commercials. Of course they are lame.
In every case of these commercials, that I can recall having seen, the target audience is white teenagers. I do not recall one public service announcement that has or featured Black African American, Hispanic or any other minority teenagers. Not one, if anyone can recall them please let me know. So to protect the very people they are trying to inform the television commercials are sanitized and tame. There is just the slightest glimmer of reality, and only for those who are white. It seems to say that anyone else can take whatever because it doesn’t matter. Unless they are counting rap music videos as PSA’s.
If there really is to be something that can deter kids from doing drugs how about a bit of reality. Pay a crackhead $20 and get photos from when they were still in school, then show them walking the street, begging for cash (or offering to trade for it), and then as/after they get their fix. Show a few ex-All Americans that are on the nod. Maybe a kid on X or a speedball O.D.ing that just happens to be in their teens. And to really make it stick in their heads, don’t show just inner city kids. It’s not that hard to find strung out rich kids, nor a kid jonesin’ in middle of the country tiny town USA. Now that might have an impact.
Just for the hell of it, why not show a few Black African American kids, maybe a before photo and an after (say at their funeral after being shot dead during a drug deal) or an Asian kid on crystal meth. Maybe a touch of reality for the kids that need it, the ones in the inner city. Not that there are more kids on drugs in the major cities of this nation [There are only 5 that match that description to me, the others are cities, places like Binghamton are just a big town.] but they have more access, shorter lifespans, higher incidence of violence and more motivation to be involved with drugs. I mean movies, music videos and songs, and preconceived notions of the general public all push for that.
Hell maybe something like showing an 18 yr old, talking about his friends he started elementary school with. Cut to a picture of his class and start putting X’s across all the kids that died due to drugs. If you did that to my elementary class about half would have been dead by 21. Another ¼ would have been in jail at least once. That doesn’t include the kids I knew from junior high school or high school. Virtually all were due to drug related crimes or cause. Now that is a motivation not to do drugs.
But that of course might offend some people. You know the ones that don’t talk to their kids about drugs, sex or the real world. The ones that scream how horrible the world has become, but don’t want to actively do things to improve it. Or so it seems to me.
This is what I think, what do you think?
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