Advertising Against Meth in Montana
MARCH 17, 2007 Listen to this Story
Web Resources
- Watch the Montana Meth Project Ads
- "I Learned It From You, Dad"
- "I Learned It From You, Dad" Parody
- Rachel Leigh Cook's Anti-Drug Frying Pan Ad
- Stop the Madness with Nancy Reagan, LaToya Jackson, David Hasselhoff, Patrick Swayze, and Many More
- Tetris Spoof of Montana Meth Project
- The Pizza Show Spoof of Montana Meth Project
Montana has one of the highest rates of methamphetamine use in the country. To help curb this, the Montana Meth Project has produced a number of shocking ads to deter kids from the drug, which is now a subject of an HBO documentary. Weekend America Reporter John Moe wonders if the campaign is working.
Notes from Senior Reporter John Moe
I ran across some anti-drug ads by the Montana Meth Project online this week and I thought they were fantastic. Fantastic to watch, anyway. They were like incredibly well-crafted short horror films, some directed by feature filmmakers Darren Aronofsky and Tony Kaye, all about the horrors of methamphetamine use. But I've never done meth, I don't live in Montana, and I'm way older than the target demographic of teenagers they were created for. So while I liked watching them, I did so with a degree of detachment. They were just scary entertainment.
I showed them to some co-workers and that got some of us at Weekend America thinking about anti-drug campaigns in general. Are these Montana Meth Project spots radically different from the "brain in a frying pan" spots of 20 years ago? Or the kid who says "I learned it from you, Dad"? Or actress Rachel Leigh Cook smashing up an apartment with a frying pan? Or are they just the same ads but updated to look like the Saw movies?
Studies show that while anti-smoking and drunk driving campaigns have been effective deterrents, anti-drug campaigns yield disappointing results and in some cases might even lead to more drug use on the part of the teenagers exposed to them. The Montana campaign says they're seeing some good results but it's way too early to tell whether these will work any better than Nancy Reagan going on Diff'rent Strokes. It feels good to know that people are trying to stop kids from screwing up their lives with drug abuse but does it work?
The worst possible final line to any news story is "only time will tell." I'm not going to use it on this story, partly because it's trite but also because I'm not sure time ever will tell on this one. In talking to friends and family and colleagues about the Montana ads and other drug prevention ads, everyone just seems to judge them on a very personal, individual basis. Most of the ads tend to get produced pro bono by agencies but those agencies are mostly skilled at selling something, at getting you to do a specific measurable thing like buy a truck or sign up for cell phone service. So they can tell when it works. But the anti-drug ads, part of multi-million dollar campaigns, are about getting people to not do something. Not even to quit in most cases, but to never do something in the first place. I'm not sure we'll ever know, after all those dollars and all that effort and all those brains placed in frying pans, if we did anything but entertain ourselves.
-
- Music Bridge:
- Corn #3
- Artist: Arthur Russell
- CD: Springfield (Audika)
Comments
Comment | Refresh
Post a Comment: Please be civil, brief and relevant.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments are moderated. Weekend America reserves the right to edit any comments on this site and to read them on the air if they are extra-interesting. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting.
You must be 13 or over to submit information to American Public Media. The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party. For more information see Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.