The ONDCP has faced criticism for years for its media campaigns, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on TV and print ads that have been shown to have zero effect (or in some cases, reverse effect) on young peoples’ attitudes about drug use.
Well, that’s all changing now.
“Above the Influence” differs from old anti-drug campaigns by including artwork from Milwaukee kids.
Ah.
[Thanks, Tom]
I will believe they have changed their ad tactics until they tell their first propaganda lie. Lets see how they are going to convince kids that marijuana is a dangerous drug without a lie or bought science.
teens looked pretty bored with Gil’s message…whatever it was…
I also think that Gil was almost nodding himself….
And did they pay those kids for their ‘art’? (Looks like transplanted graffiti to me.) Or was it ‘voluntary’?
I really have to laugh at the prohibs; they think kids are blank slates they can write anything on. But a great many of those kids are ‘above the (prohib) influence’ and are not swallowing a bit of this moronic kabuki.
(And you can make a very safe bet that they have nothing but contempt for their peers who assented to being used as a propaganda foil.)
Kids aren’t robots, blank slates, punch cards or tools. They have their own minds, think their own thoughts…and after having spent most of their lives being manipulated and regulated, have developed very sharp BS detectors. Gil wasted his time and our dime on this latest boondoggle. But what do you expect from the ONDCP?
I can’t get over how, after their cries of anguish, “What about the children?,” they go right out and get them involved in this sort of thing. Yeah, Gil, What About The Children? We don’t USE them but you sure do. Who really cares about the children, Gil? EXPOSURE must be the deal of the day for ONDCP. What next? Cannabis laced goodies so you can bust them as they leave the school? Or, just a reason to bust in on their families?
This new idea of yours is sucking your eyes lower, bud!
And, to bolster my case, comes a YouTube link from GritsForBreakfast
(You could advance to 8:20 in the presentation where the point relevant to this post is, but I’d suggest you watch the whole thing, as the speaker is talking about how practicality eventually forces cultural change, which is what the MMJ issue is doing to herald the much larger endiing of drug prohibition.)
Even though it’s not about the DrugWar, it makes the point that the kids are living in what amounts to a schizoidal situation where they know the culture of their parents is essentially not theirs, and that young people today, courtesy of technology, are creating a new culture thanks to that technology…which knows no real boundaries. A culture defined by pragmatism, not ideology. Which is at crossed swords with the hide-bound, ideologically-ossified thinking of the generation that produced them.
Like I said, the kids are a lot sharper than ol’ Gil and his concrete-brained peers at ONDCP want to credit them as being. Gil’s a dinosaur addressing the sharp, nimble, quick ‘mammals’, telling them how the natural order should be, but the ‘mammals’ are sitting back with secret smiles on their faces, and laughing at his lack of comprehension of their world. And, very soon, as the ‘Greatest Generation’ dies off, and the Boomers begin to retire, it really will be their world.
And the kids will have long memories about how they were humiliated by their parents and those of their parent’s generation that imposed upon the Gen X and Y’ers what their parents would not voluntarily do to themselves (I mean drug testing, of course). And with an increasingly souring economy, that’s going to make for an explosive mixture, as caring for the Boomers will strain the already drowning-in-red-ink National Debt. Those elderly Boomers may find themselves becoming ‘boomerangs’ and having to live with and be cared for by the very kids they humiliated.
And, as they say, “payback is a bitch”