http://www.easternecho.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?3948


Anti-drug ads have bad side-effects

By Zach Garrett / Staff Writer
MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2005


"A B C D PCP, E or X and THC, Special K and LSD, Gs and H and GHB.
Now I know my drugs you see, next time won't you sing with me?"

Pretty catchy—I have to give the guys at drugfree.org a standing
ovation. Not only have they brought this mini handbook of illicit
drugs to the public in their television ad, but they've done it in
song format. The best part is, a cute little girl is carrying the
tune.

There is also the little boy in the school cafeteria singing "Bah bah
black sheep" with the same sort of lyrics.

Nursery rhymes are designed to be simple and catchy so children can
remember and understand them. How are these commercials with their
drug-based lyrics going to prevent kids from doing drugs? Your guess
is as good as mine. But apparently these little songs are supposed to
touch the hearts of parents and get them to understand that young
children already know a lot about drugs. This will compel them to
teach their children about the dangerous side effects of drug use at
a young age.

These commercials run on a regular basis on most network and cable
stations including child-oriented stations like Nickelodeon. I
suppose that within a specific context these commercials could serve
some good. But part of the problem is that there is no context
besides the rhyme itself, and the child singing it.

Although, when you think about it, context (or at least the right
one), has always been lacking in "just say no to drugs and alcohol"
commercials. Remember how just a couple years ago buying marijuana
was portrayed as being the same thing as sponsoring terrorism? George
Bush even spoke out and said if you don't do drugs you're actually
fighting the war on terror.

But if you connect the marijuana commercial and Bush's statement with
these new rhyming debacles, you end up with elementary schools full
of terrorists. So what we need to do is lock down the grammar schools
and ship any child who may have used drugs off to Guantanamo. That
way we'll eliminate a good portion of the terrorist sponsorship and
the threat to the American way of life.

But perhaps that's too harsh. Instead, maybe parents, government
officials, and others in authoritative roles should tell kids the
truth.

Last week one of my favorite episodes of South Park was on Comedy
Central. In this particular episode the parents of Stan Marsh, one of
the cartoon's main characters, acquired the assistance of a company
called Motivation Corp. in order to prevent their son from using
drugs.

The company fakes an electric storm that brings the future self of
their son, played by an actor, to the Marsh's home. Eventually, Stan
figures out that the man from the future who's supposed to be him is
actually played by an actor from Motivation Corp.

In an attempt to get his parents to tell him the truth, Stan fakes
cutting of his hand. His future self should then be missing his hand.
In order to keep the facade going, instead of telling Stan the truth,
Mr. Marsh cuts off the actor's hand. Stan decides to run away instead
of being lied to, and it's at this point that his parents finally
fess up and admit that they should have just been straightforward
with Stan.

The point is this: parents have to confront their children and tell
them the truth. Children will respect what their parents say and what
they ask them to do. But part of the problem is that parents don't
always get the chance to be the first ones to talk to their kids
about drugs.

When I was surfing the net trying to get some feedback on what
parents thought about these new commercials, I found one blog that
really stuck. A parent with three children was at home making dinner.
She had her youngest, a toddler, in the kitchen with her. She had set
her three-year-old in the living room to watch Nickelodeon.

A little while after leaving her son in the living room he came into
the kitchen singing a little song. "Bah bah black sheep have you any
E." His mother was shocked. She says her three-year-old had never
even heard the original nursery rhyme and had no idea what he was
talking about.

She never got the chance to talk to her kid about drugs because the
people at drugfree.org thought they should do it for her. The
commercial may target parents as its intended audience, but who
really watches Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network? Children do. Parents
trust that they can have their kids watch these stations without the
threat of bad influences. Anti-drug organizations should not take it
upon themselves to educate small children about drugs without giving
the parents a chance first.

So run your commercials on TNT and Comedy Central, but keep them off
children's programming. Six year-olds don't need to know about drugs
and definitely don't need to learn about them in the context of the
alphabet song. Let kids be kids, because one of the best parts of
childhood is the ignorance of every bad thing in life.

Parents need to be the ones who step up and let their kids know about
the dangers of drug use. The government and other anti-drug
organizations need to stop wasting their money and ours and let the
parents talk to their kids first. Otherwise instead of "bah bah black
sheep have you any wool," you end up with "bah bah black sheep have
any E! Yes sir, yes sir, first hit's free!"