U.S. Anti-Drug Campaign Flops

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a wing of the U.S Executive Office of the President, started a media campaign to attack drug use in September of 1999. A main component of the campaign called phase three was specifically aimed at reducing marijuana use, which started in Oct 2002 ending June 2003. The target group was youth ages twelve to eighteen. Studies have shown that the ads have had no effect on reducing marijuana use. The appointed advertising company Ogilvy & Mathers, employed many techniques in getting the ads to effect youth even creating a brand name but to no avail. It is not clear what techniques Ogilvy & Mathers used in evaluating there adds appeal to youth but in this paper I will show that they did not consider some key points.

The media campaign had three goals:

• Educate and enable America's youth to reject illegal drugs; population.

• Prevent youth from initiating use of drugs, especially marijuana and inhalants; and population.

• Convince occasional users of these and other drugs to stop using drugs

To accomplish these goals Ogilvy & Mathers, also media buyers put ads in all forms of print media, on public and private television, cinema and the Internet. The campaign cost an estimated 150 million dollars a year making all options possible. This phase and the entire campaign ended in the summer of 2003.

The proof that the ad campaign was a failure is supported by a research firm called Westat funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). In their executive summary it is stated that there is no evidence to support a reduction in marijuana use in conjunction with the ad campaign. Parents were also a sub target group of the campaign to increase drug talks with youth but this was also a failure. In the NIDA report, exposure to the ads was favourable in this sense to delivering the anti-marijuana message. Ad space was purchased so as exposure would be roughly two ads per week. This is the only portion of the campaign that met its goal.

The NIDA report was conducted several times over the course of the ad campaign by interviewing youth and parents. Participants were met at home with an electronic anonymous survey. A variety of questions were answered on a laptop computer. The finding concluded that youth ages 12-18 did not change views or intended use of marijuana and not conclusively may have had a negative effect. Parents claimed that they were talking to their children more but youth contradicted this.

The ad examples in this essay give two distinct feelings about their message and target group. The cheerleader ad being classical conditioning is trying to get a connection with marijuana and failure. The target group is clear however did Ogilvy & Mathers use a reference group to judge the effectiveness of the picture. I cannot see young girls in mass numbers striving to be cheerleaders. The inference of being on top is noticeable with examination but if you gave the ad a once over and walked away I doubt it would sink in. If this is a primary ad for this target group it is no wonder the campaign failed. The other ad entitled pothead, for males, evokes a defensive response while providing an image too follow. However, it’s not saying don’t smoke, many males would laugh at this saying my invincibility allows me to produce these attributes. Therefore male youths would not be effected from this ad. The emphasis on enlarging the words Pothead, are, just, and wrong does have a good subconscious effect but would be easily dismissed. This ad does demonstrate the principles of Instrumental conditioning.

The two forms of conditioning mentioned above seem redundant when comes to youth. I would refer to Weilbacher’s article (How advertising affects