Drugs In The Media Essay Text

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Depiction of drugs in the electronic media because of the clear and present danger of schedule i and ii drugs, the electronic news media should reinforce our negative evaluations of schedule i and ii drugs by depicting them as causes of social evils вќ is a statement that has been debated for years. Should the electronic news media be held responsible for the way that they depict drugs? people have com accustomed to automatically believing the things they see on television and the news. Due to the electronic news media's extreme influence over the people who follow the media, there is some truth to the above statement. People are influenced by the views of the media, so the media should carefully decide the way they want to depict schedule i and ii drugs in their stories and broadcasts. The electronic media has a great influence over the way the public sees any given subject. The influence that the media has over people is no different when it comes to their representation of drugs.

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The stances that the electronic media take in any certain situation are the same stances that most of the viewing public is also going to take. When it comes to the war on drugs, it seems that the electronic media takes a pretty solid negative stance against drugs, especially schedule i and ii drugs. There are many ways that the electronic media can influence the views of the public. The main source of influence that the electronic media has at their disposal is their power of creating stories that can put the drugs in a positive or negative light.

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It is up to each individual media arm to decide how they want to depict the story. One thing is for certain though, if a media group runs a story portraying marijuana as an evil вќ drug and that it should be completely cleaned off the stre the use of media advertising to fight the war on drugs has been around for many years. The partnership for a drug free america pdfa and the office of national drug control policy ondcp are the main two groups that are tackling this problem. The pdfa had a unique creative strategy that they had created before the ondcp joined in on the fight.

Our writers can help get your essay back on track, take a look at our services to learn more about how we can help. Essay writing service essay marking service place an order the pdfa was created by two advertising executives, dick o'reilly and phil joanou in the mid 1980's and funded by a grant from the american association of advertising agencies. O'reilly and joanou set out to gather advice and recruit members to join the cause whose goal was to help kids and teens reject substance abuse by influencing attitudes through persuasive information. The campaign was officially launched on march 5, 1987, but o'reilly was killed in an accident before he got to see the success of the campaign. James burke who was the retired chairman of johnson amp johnson replaced o'reilly and was elected chairman of the partnership in 1989.

By this time, there were already more than thirty television commercials, sixty four print ads and numerous radio spots produced by some of the country's leading advertising agencies belch amp belch. The early spots were considered melodramatic, and relied too much on scare tactics and stereotypes. Some of these stereotypes were school bus drivers who snort cocaine, african american boys selling crack at school, and the one puff and you are hooked messages. Many studies on the effects of drug abuse programs noted that scare tactics have not been found to be an effective way to change attitudes and behavior. I agree with this idea because i can say first hand that scare tactics seem to push young people to do the opposite. There were also issues with credibility of the pdfa as some critics argued that they exaggerated and distorted facts. One example was a 1987 ad claiming to show the brain waves of a fourteen year old smoking pot which was actually the brain of a person in a coma.

This resulted in the pdfa taking a much better look at the ads and commercials before releasing them. Despite the early problems in the campaign, the pdfa was gaining success in billions of dollars of pro bono time and effort from advertising agencies and media time and space. Throughout the 1990's, there was still many who were skeptical about the effectiveness of the pdfa efforts, and they found themselves constantly having to demonstrate that their efforts were having an impact on drug use. During this time, government surveys were showing an increase in the use of cocaine and heroin by urban youth and the use of lsd by college students which caused even more controversy.

Burke and pfda argued that although there might not be proof of actual behavior change, there was a link between teens' exposure to the anti drug messages and their disapproval of drug use. This idea was based on the annual partnership attitude tracking survey pats conducted by the gordon s. Black corporation who used mall intercepts of high school students to collect their data. The study concluded that most teens remembered the anti drug ads and said they were influenced by them. Despite all good reports on the ads, media support and pro bono time and space declined every year from 1991 to 1998. Upon becoming involved with the anti drug advertising campaign, the ondcp hired the ogilvy amp mather worldwide advertising agency to coordinate the campaign, and instituted a greater focus on market segmentation.

They realized that all drugs and their consequences are different, so they developed new ads taking into consideration the type of drug and its consequences and the specific target group. The different messages were designed to appeal specific age groups, as well as different geographic, socioeconomic an ethnic audiences. In 1998, the pdfa and ondcp began working on a new campaign that was supposed to educate america's youth as well as parents. However, in 2002 research concluded that the anti drug campaign ads were effective to adults, while the ads aimed at kids were not effective and may have negative effects. The study showed that females aged 12 13 who did not use drugs said that the ads made them curious to try them.

This changed the ad policies so that all commercials were tested for effectiveness prior to their showing. Adults are more concerned with the issue because it is their children they are trying to protect. So the ads raise awareness to the parents and make them want to be more proactive in keeping their children safe from drug abuse.

Young people however are at that age where they haven't heard about drugs at all, or have heard from friends at school and they are naturally curious about drugs. I believe that is easy to influence young people and if they have already heard about drugs from classmates, the anti drug ads may tempt them even more to try, and even raise their awareness of harder drugs they didn't know about. I think when it comes to the younger population, there needs to be a more invasive type of anti drug campaign starting when they are very young, so that the first opinion they form about drugs is negative. They should implement an anti drug program in schools at least once a year starting when the kids are very young to deter and misconceptions kids have about drugs. Many have already formed opinions that drugs are cool, or have even already tried drugs. Who wrote this essay request removal example essays the ondcp and pdfa faced a challenge of proving that the money being spent on the anti drug messages was having an impact and achieving the goal of reducing drug use among young people. There were several research studies that both groups believed showed that advertising was working including the gordon s.

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