KIDS DRUG EDUCATION/PREVENTION
The ad agency Ogilvy & Mather has worked with the PDFA in the past. These are the people who made the spots that link drug use to terrorism. It was also discovered that Ogilvy over billed it's anti drug accounts ( it paid a $1.8 million penalty) and is also under criminal investigation(8).
Reseachers funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) said"There were indications of an increase in past month marijuana use between 2000 and 2002, followed by a decrease in both lifetime and past month use between 2002 and 2004, but there is no evidence that the Campaign was responsible for these changes. Among nonusing youth, there were favorable changes over time in anti-drug attitudes and beliefs, and the proportion of youth saying they would definitely not try marijuana; however, results from the association analyses did not support a claim that exposure to the Campaign influenced these trends.", and it also said "Finally, an analysis of youth who had already begun using marijuana yielded no evidence that higher Campaign exposure led to quitting or reduced use."(9 ).
Government Accountability Office (GAO) found "credible evidence that the campaign was not effective in reducing youth drug use, either during the entire period of the campaign or during the period from 2002 to 2004, when the campaign was redirected and focused on marijuana use."(10 ).
With hundreds of million of dollars spent Media campaigns not only PDFA but the "just Say No" campaign, and MTV's "Rock Against Drugs.". The question is do scare tactics work? A survey found that 20% said the scare campaigns discouraged them to do drugs, 33% thought they encouraged drug use and 23% had under gone an attitude change and planned to try drugs (11).
A researcher discovered that not only are the anti drug advertisements not as effective as intended, they also may have the opposite effect. The spot linking drug use to terrorism led some youths to believe that marijuana should be legalized, and marijuana users should "grow their own"(12 ).