Drugs: a chicken and an egg thing.

The agency I work for created these ads as part of a bigger campaign to curtail meth use in the U.S. They were directed by Darren Aronofsky of Requiem for a Dream fame, which, I guess, qualifies him as the drug director. The fact that he doesn't seem to have had a drug problem doesn't diminish the power of his work and these spots are powerful and disturbing, no question about that. They made me squeamish, uncomfortable, and just plain grossed out--almost too much so because I was detached from the experience. I could not relate. There was one ad that came close; a teenage girl at a house party approaches a group of kids smoking meth and asks to be included. That desire to fit in is so strong at that age.

I never used meth, nor was it ever offered to me and so I was completely detached from the experience of watching these ads. I suppose the idea is to scare kids straight, right? You show them the worst possible outcomes--physical deterioration, prostitution, death--and hope that it deters them from ever picking up. But what these ads fail to recognize is that death and depravity are part of the attraction; along with getting high, self destruction and annihilation are goals, not deterrents. An accidental overdose looks better on a death certificate than suicide. Get it?

For that reason, I'm not sure this approach works. It makes all the adults in the room feel good, but I'm not convinced it will thwart a drug addict from picking up.

Maybe I was more cynical than the average kid, but I remember having derision for anti-drug messages. (Then again, I came up during Nancy Reagan's "Just say No" years, which we mocked mercilessly. I even dressed as Nancy for Halloween and my friend accompanied me as a pre-sober Betty Ford.) This is what we knew then: the people behind the anti-drug campaigns were old and out of touch and didn't care about kids; they just wanted to control our behaviors. How else do you explain the continual slashing of education budgets and services to youth but a willingness to dump millions on ad agencies to produce anti-drug campaigns? What I know now: the agencies who benefited from the great fortune of cranking out this noble work often celebrate by getting good and high on legal drugs: alcohol.

I don't have an answer. I don't know how you stop an addict from acting like an addict. I only know what works after. Maybe these ads are not meant for addicts but for casual users, in which case what's the fucking point? Spend the money on schools.