This is Your Brain on the Drug War

Trump wants to spend "a lot of money" on a new round of anti-drug commercials. Just say no.

-----
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/reasontv
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magazine/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes: https://goo.gl/az3a7a

Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
-----

During a rally in New Hampshire last month, President Trump promised that the federal government would "spend a lot of money" on a new anti-drug campaign that would scare kids "from ending up like the people in the commercials."

We'll make them "very, very bad commercials," Trump told the crowd. "We'll make them pretty unsavory situations."

Yet research on the effectiveness of past anti-drug campaigns, including a 2014 meta-analysis of 19 studies, concluded that these efforts had little to no effect on use of illicit substances. A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Public Health looked at the effectiveness of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which ran from 1998 and 2004 and cost $1 billion. It found that the program may have had the opposite of its intended impact, actually encouraging drug use.

Isn't it time to just say no?

Written, produced, and shot by Meredith and Austin Bragg. Edited by Meredith Bragg.

For links to the above studies and downloadable versions, visit: https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/04/25/this-is-your-brain-thinking-about-anti-d