Stupid anti-marijuana commercials
 

Can I just ask...

Ok, I do not smoke marijuana(I'm a classical voice major, I refuse to smoke anything EVER so I can pursue a career), though I have friends who do, which generally I don't have a problem with. They're very intelligent people, and very motivated, and to be honest, I see people abuse themselves much, much more using alchohol. But that's just to give you an idea of my connection with the subject matter, on to the actual point of my post...


Does anyone else find these "Marijuana...it's more harmful than we all thought" commercials to be entirely ridiculous and uninformed? I can't help but crack up everytime I see them.

So apparently smoking marijuana will cause you to support terrorism, shoot your friend(with his father's gun), cause a car accident, and get pregnant. Puuuuuuuuuhleeeeeeeeeeaze.

Support terrorism? Well, that may be very very very very far removedly true(although at NYU, which I belive is the Number 2 pot college in the country, weed is obtainted almost if not entirely from home grown student sources.), however there are plenty of illegal substances that do that in an exponentially larger way.

Shoot your friend? oh come ON, that's just ridiculous, there is no legitimate connection at all. There's a better way to prevent a situation like that, but it involves stricter gun control, and entirely different issue...

Cause a car accident? Hmmm...I think people are confusing smoking up with getting drunk. I don't encourage people to smoke and drive of course, my point is that alchohol is legal and it's a bigger cause of road accidents.

GET PREGNANT???? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Marijuana, while it does alter someone's mindset, does not have a significant(does it have ANY???) link with teenage pregnancy. Once again, I point you to alchohol, a readily available substance for people everywhere.


Anyways, I'm not necessarily opposed to preventing the use of marijuana, although I think it would be a much wiser and more profitable decision for the government to legalize and strictly regulate it(i.e. tax the crap out of it like cigarettes in NY). But at least if you ARE going to campaign against it, come up with better and less corny ads! If I were a teen watching these ads I'd actually prolly be incited to try marijuana.

Does anyone else have thoughts on the subject?

in reguards to the pregnancy commercial: if i DID get so wasted and ended up becoming pregnant that same night... my parents wouldn't hug me when the test results came up... they'd prolly smack me.

It is however, advertising. Sometimes the most extremes will get the point across and cause you to think or even start msg board topics like this one. :D

I do agree, but I don't find these to be 'extreme'...Just stupid!! Anyone with any knowledge of marijuana and it's effects knows what a load of crap and how far removed from reality these commercials are.. Oh, and my favorite is the one where it's talking about something like 1 in 5 people involved in deadly car accidents tested positive for marijuana...WELL DUH, 1 in ANY 5 people tested would come up positive for marijuana... Unlike alcohol, the tell-tale signs of usage stay in your system for more than a day..up to something like 1-2 months, longer than that if they take a hair test....How does that prove they were altered when the accident did happen??? Arg..Just one of my pet peeves...

The commercial with the couple reading the pregnancy test--
"their lives are about to change".... "they are about to become the youngest grandparents in town". I laugh everytime I see that one. It has to be one of the funniest commercials on tv.

--wendi

I think that the commercials are pretty good. I kind of took them as "marijuana = lowered inhibitions = stupid stuff happens".

The fact that they are "real life" kind of situations that teenagers might relate to, like smoking up at a party, in the car, in your parents house, make them more realistic than "if you smoke weed, then you are a dirty hippie who is homeless and smelly and deals with shady characters" image.

But with that said, marijuana supporting terrorism? :rolleyes: Yeah, right. Your dealer is probably a bored, middle-aged white guy going through a mid-life crisis who steals it off his mom who grows it in her garden for glaucoma." ;)

I like those commercials. I think that they are better than:

"This is your brain" shows an egg
"This is your brain on drugs" cracks the egg
"Any questions?" egg is fried

Oh Cream...that will forever be a classic! :D

:D
How about the one where the girl starts to trash the kitchen with the frying pan?! She says the same lines and then goes psycho. :eek: "ANY QUESTIONS?" :p

I also like the pregnancy test commercial. My guys are hitting the age where they might find themselves confronted with both girls and marijuana (yikes to both!) Like Moxie said, we took it to be more of a "marijuana = lowered inhibitions = stupid stuff happens" and the boys responded as expected.

That means, they were like "ewww, no way!" :)

I think they're hilarious. My friends and I have a particularly stupid inside joke where one of us is like, "Dude, your sister's hot" and somebody else says, "Dude, that's not cool" and pretends to shoot the first person. I still laugh every time I see the one where the little girl gets hit by the car . . . I know, I'm a terrible person, but it's just so cheesy that I can't help it.

I think the anti-drug movement is shooting itself in the foot with these commercials. Everybody I know thinks they're ridiculous, and anybody who knows anything about marijuana (basically anybody over the age of 15) knows how little fact is actually contained in them.

Does anybody else find it significant that after the big anti-smoking ad campaign was launched, teen smoking rates actually went UP? I think the same thing will probably happen with these . . . teenagers start to lose faith in the anti-drug movement after being confronted with propaganda that's this ridiculous.

I thought the "my anti-drug" commercials that showed dancers, singers, and that kind of thing, while cheesy, were at least more realistic than these and showed some legitimate reasons not to smoke up.

I know pot is more or less legal here--nobody cares, and really there are no more car accidents, or unintended pregncncy's or terrorist attacks for that matter. Pot is somthing that is not really an issue (especially in this univeristy town) and personally i don't see a huge difference between it and alcohol.

I think the commercials are pretty stupid also, but I usually turn them off before I get to watch the entire thing. My boyfriend and his brothers constantly make fun of them and re-enact them just to have fun. And I totally agree with what someone said earlier about the commercials intriguing the children more to partake in the activities. Monkey see, monkey do!!!! :p


Jadey

I've seen more lives ruined by alcohol use than with marijuana use. Marijuana is a "gateway drug"? So is boredom. That's all I have to say on that.

The Pregnancy Test one makes me laugh, too! My partner and I were bent over in laughter after that one (Super Bowl Sunday). That same commercial could be done with alcohol (with thousands of examples, I'm sure), but then...it was sandwiched between two beer commercials. :rolleyes:

Basically, marijuana is a mind-altering drug, but does not incite the same behavior as other, shall we say, aggressive drugs (alcohol, cocaine, speed). Karmically, it's just different--and doesn't lead to teenage pregnancies no more than boredom, miseducation, or lack of contraception does. Why don't these companies start trying to do something REALLY constructive? Or, at least start focusing on more lethal drugs? :confused:

Now, for once, I'm truly offended.

I lost my best friend a few years back to smoking marijuana which caused her to do something -very- stupid and ended up dying to to it. When you lose someone to something as 'harmless' as marijuana, you realize that it's not as harmless as it seems.

ps: I also worked for an Drug Education program, you learn a lot, and you see a lot. Next time you're out, check out a drug rehab and ask someone how they started. 90% it's the same thing...weed.

First of all, I'm sorry about your friend.

Still, I don't think whether or not marijuana is dangerous is the issue. Of course it's dangerous -- but no more so than alcohol, which also leads people to do very stupid things and leads to deaths.

And yes, marijuana may be the first drug that many of those who eventually get addicted to harder drugs try, but there are also millions and millions of people who never try any drugs other than marijuana.

Here's some other information that counters what these ads are telling us:

Smoking marijuana does not support terrorism. Eleven out of the 12 groups on America's list of "terror organizations with links to drug trafficking" are based in the Middle East and Colombia, which are not pot-growing regions. The twelfth is a Basque terror group known for trafficking heroin, not pot. The overwhelming majority of marijuana used by Americans is grown here, or in Mexico, Jamaica or Canada.

In studies done by scientists, caffeine and marijuana ranked as the two least addictive drugs (out of a study that also included nicotine, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine). In one such study, marijuana ranked lower than caffeine on the addictive scale.

At least 33 percent of all Americans have used pot at least once. (The actual number is probably much higher, as the 33 percent figure comes from a government-conducted survey. Would you tell the government if you were smoking up? Doubt it.) The overwhelming majority of them go on to lead productive lives, and don't end up killing people, running them over or having unprotected sex and getting pregnant.

Re: Stupid anti-marijuana commercials
 

Answer: No

Yes, you do learn a lot and see a lot. I also have experience with drug education and rehabilitation. 90% of addicts may say marijuana, but in my experience, 100% can also say alcohol. Because alcohol is legal and more accessible in some cases, it is not seen as lethal, or a "gateway" drug as marijuana (which is illegal).

So, I'd like to start seeing commercials that are anti-alcohol. No, I won't hold my breath...

What's interesting is that I've found, and this may not be true everywhere, but it's a trend I've seen...is that many people that are involved in drug education programs (and example is D.A.R.E., if anyone's hear of it) are themselves current drug users...it's pretty pathetic actually. I don't accuse anyone of ignoring this trend in their community or being apart of it, it's just something I've been exposed to in my life.

For the person whose friend died, I'm very sorry to hear that. I still don't see how marijuana is a serious reson for deaths that are linked through these commercials. Again, I point you to alchohol, which we can see through many articles posted on this site , is a much more prominent force in deaths, rape, and other awful things. How many times have you seen some one post, "well it's time for people to take responsibility for their actions etc"? The same goes for marijuana. People who go to hard drugs are usually addictive people who really didn't need weed to get there. Those same people often start substance abuse with alchohol before marijuana, yet it's not regarded as a gateway drug. And this is something you can get into any neighborhood from a very young age, if you know where your parents' liquor cabinet is.

You say marijuana kills, but my good friend's mother has lived longer using it. She has cerebral palsy, and with the standard medication she took was projected to have already died some years ago. Well, she still lives, smokes up everyday, and has been told that it was a large factor in her survival. Of course, I don't really advocate smoking it because you're basically burning your lungs which is bad no matter what, but hey, it comes in brownie form too.

So you know someone who died, I know someone who lived. The point is that yes, marijuana could be either bad or good. It's all in how controlled the intake of it is. The real problem with it now is that because it's illegal, there is no way for it to be regulated by the government, or to be manufactured with set standards. And remember, what you're not supposed to do is always more attractive to people. And so you have kids everywhere just itching to at least try it.

I'm not saying that you're lying or wrong about what happened to your friend,(although it is a bit of a vague connection, just from reading what you typed) but really that's not the point. The point is that these commercials are stupid and are not effective. I could easily make up a story that because Tina drank too much caffeine, it made her incredibly jittery, and so while shaving she cut herself with a razor, bled and died. Starbucks...it's more harmful than we all thought. That's about how much sense these commercials make. I mean, if I get drunk and shoot my friend in the head, can I blame it on the alchohol???? Kids aren't stupid, they can very easily make that connection as well. They see through things much more than adults give them credit for, and once they do it's pretty hard to get the intended message across. If you really want to reach people, stick with the proven facts, rather than emotional conclusion jumping.

I think those of us who have, ahem, been around for awhile can provide a unique view on pot. We were the kids of the sixties and seventies and most of us were exposed to drugs pretty heavily in college...whether or not we partook. For the record, I did not.

However, many many people I know did, including some of my relatives. I remember what they were like before they started smoking and what they were like after. There was just something missing. Some people who were really sharp before they used pot had short- and longterm memory problems. Apparently, it doesn't take very long for pot to affect retention. I've taught in a corrections institution biweekly for 14 years and teenagers who have smoked pot for just a couple of years can hardly remember the contents of a paragraph they just read. Frequently, their teachers from their old schools assure us they weren't like that before they started smoking weed.

Also, anyone who has driven with someone who was high has probably seen that that person was as bad a driver as any drunk. I certainly had the crap scared out of myself on several occasions like that. I don't care to have anyone whose driving is impaired out on the road.

Sugar and spice, I don't understand what cerebral palsy had to do with your friend's mother being terminal--CP doesn't kill.:confused:

While I don't advocate drug use, I find the commercials ridiculous.

The one that bothers me the most is the "1 in 3 drivers who were tested for drug use tested positive." Think about that... how often do drivers get tested for drug use? Only if there's a reason to suspect they're on something. And ONLY 1 in 3 that were SUSPECTED of drug use actually were using it?

I think the commercials are just propoganda. I'm sure kids she it the same way. Does pot have negative effects? Yes, absolutely. So let's educate people on those things, not on the very unlikely situations those commercials portray.

Exactly. I'm not really an advocate of marijuana myself, especially in chronic and intense(i.e. bong) use. I think it would be much more effective to show actual interviews with doctors or long time users about how it affected them physically and mentally. These ads with the corny after school actors just looks contrived and fake, and looks more like mom wagging her finger at you.

But I also think that giving the government control of marijuana as a legal substance would also help to curb many of the alleged problems caused by it.

where did you read that teen smoking rates went UP?

you say that "everybody you know" knows it's "ridiculous". but what about the kids and teens that DON'T know? not everyone is as well informed as your friends. :rolleyes:

i teach children. most of them know that drugs are "bad." what they don't always know or remember is WHY they're bad. not all kids have parents that teach them WHY drugs are bad and that is who we need to reach. many hear rap songs and watch tv where smoking up is "cool" and don't understand the ramifications of getting behind the wheel of a car while high.

these commercials show the effects of impaired judgement. of course they're not definite outcomes of smoking pot. they may be silly to you, but if they reach just one kid, they'll be justified.


quote:
"Would you tell the government if you were smoking up? Doubt it.) The overwhelming majority of them go on to lead productive lives, and don't end up killing people, running them over or having unprotected sex and getting pregnant."

my god, what ignorance. POT IMPAIRS JUDGEMENT WHICH LEADS TO POOR DECISION MAKING SKILLS AND SLOWED REACTION TIME. period.


and what does CP have to do with anything?????

substitute "pot" with "alchohol" and you still have a correct statement. It's a double standard that kids can see through. My generation was force fed the whole drug education program as kids, and now many of those kids have grown up to at least try the substances they were warned against. I think that a significant reason for this is that the unique factual effects of marijuana are ignored in favor of moralizing fables. It is my contention that this is not the way to go. And if there really aren't enough harmful effects that can separate smoking pot from getting drunk, then I don't understand why one is ok and not the other.

I agree, carnation. I myself have never smoked or done drugs. I will drink--I've been close to drunk (I guess that's what it was!) one time, in college--but don't drink that often now.

I've also heard that marijuana leads to stronger and more addictive drugs. I've heard stories of what people will do to get drugs. Such a sad situation.

I read in some newspaper article (I forget which one, it was a while ago) that teen smoking rates have gone up since the big anti-smoking ad campaign was launched. I assumed this was true as the facts would be easy to check if they were wrong, but I never checked up on them myself. I believe what the article said that teen smoking rates went down in the early 90s, but in the late 90s after the anti-smoking ad campaign was launched, they went back up. I'm not sure if this was nationally or only state-wide. Either way, that result would not surprise me.

I have nothing against drug education. However, I ask please please please that you feed your children facts, not anti-drug DARE-esque propaganda. I was a product of the DARE generation and I went through DARE or similar programs at least four times. So did my peers. Although I have not gone on to experiment with drugs, I have considered it. Most of my peers HAVE at least tried marijuana. Most of us were extremely put off by DARE or similar programs once we got old enough to think for ourselves and realize that a lot of what DARE was telling us was wrong or skewed. And while DARE does do some good by telling kids what drugs can do to you, ultimately it undoes all that good because kids eventually realize how many lies and how much propaganda ("You can get physically addicted to marijuana," "Any drinking whatsoever is bad for you") is mixed in, and they start to wonder if EVERYTHING they heard in DARE was made up.

Obviously marijuana is not good for you in most cases (medicinal cases are another issue entirely). But the fact of the matter is, marijuana is NOT cocaine, heroine, speed, exstasy, whatever. Marijuana is no worse than alcohol. Unlike alcohol, it is not addictive. It kills brain cells and causes you to forget things? So does alcohol. It impairs judgment and may cause you to do stupid things? So does alcohol. Your statement "POT IMPAIRS JUDGEMENT WHICH LEADS TO POOR DECISION MAKING SKILLS AND SLOWED REACTION TIME" is equally true for alcohol. So why should alcohol be legal while marijuana is not?

Marijuana does not kill people. Does marijuana impair judgement? YES. SO DOES ALCOHOL. Can impaired judgement lead you to make stupid decisions that can kill somebody? Yes. But neither alcohol nor marijuana kills people. That's why alcohol is not illegal, but drunk driving is.

As for the whole "if they reach one kid, they'll be justified" thing -- they may reach one kid, but they may also make a whole new generation of kids jaded with the anti-drug movement. Because these commercial are so similar to the DARE propaganda, they may ultimately cause more damage than they help.

The use of alcohol in itself can indeed kill people--it can lead to cirrhosis and many other conditions. I would assume that pot smoking carries with it many of the same risks of tobacco smoking.

And the indirect effects of both pot and alcohol can be terrible. My husband's cousin loved to smoke pot in the seventies. No one ever saw him do anything worse but he did love his pot. One night at a party, someone slipped some hallucinogen into his drink. He freaked out and had to be taken to the mental institution here.

He will never be able to leave the institution.

obviously alcohol as serious effects if abused. that is not the discussion.

these are anti-drug commercials, not anti-alcohol. if people want to tell kids the effects of alcohol, they'll make their own commercials. i don't understand why you are combining the 2. they are not saying that alcohol is harmless and drugs are bad. they are saying that drugs impair judgement.

i will continue to teach my kids that drugs are bad. they are 9. they don't understand the difference between cocaine and pot. drugs are bad, period.

while DARE is a slightly fluffy program, at least it is trying to get a message across! kids need to know that drugs are bad!!! you're telling me that you clearly remember the messages from DARE later in life and thought it was propaganda?:rolleyes: that tells me that DARE did it's JOB and YOU were able to sort through facts as you got older and more informed. so your statement tells the VALIDITY of a program such as DARE.

these messages never said that pot is addictive. it says they impair judgement.

no kids are "going to get jaded with the anti-drug movement". if people want to do drugs, they will. but at least they will be INFORMED of it's POSSIBLE effects.

and no, to whoever said kids can see through this "propaganda" thing that keeps getting thrown around. kids don't know. they need to be taught so when they grow up they can make their own INFORMED decisions.

if you guys want to do drugs, go for it. but let the kids have a CHANCE. they deserve that much.

Kids are ALREADY jaded with the antidrug propoganda movement, hello have you been listening to anything we've been saying. Our generation is a product of those programs, and it's not a very successful outcome.

The reason I point out the similarities between effects of pot and alchohol that are shown in the commercials is this: If I can make the connection, and YOU can make the connection, then kids can make it as well. Don't you understand, it makes you look like a hypocrite, and that's what kids hate most.

Just because people remember antidrug programs does not mean they "worked." I really don't understand that rationale, there are plenty of things I remember being told long ago that I don't follow now. If someone remembers that what they were told was a pack of bs, the reaction is to rebell against that and do what they've been told not to for so long. It's really not smart to underestimate children, because even if they don't understand now, they will grow up one day and put two and two together. So make sure you're really teaching them the right information.

And if you have been listening to anything carnation has been saying about the use of drugs (firsthand knowledge from watching a relative screw up his life), those same kids who might have been able to put two and two together BEFORE taking drugs won't be able to come up with "four" AFTERWARDS.

Ay. Ok, let's try again. There is something to be said about being honest regarding the short term and long term effects of pot. It is bound to be more effective than courting curiosity with flimsy stories. I don't understand why that's so difficult to do. Can anyone point me to statistics showing how narcotics use has fluctuated if at all since these programs were implemented?

Thank you, that was what I was trying to say.

I grew up in a world where we were fed "information" along the lines of these commercials in every anti-drug program we were made to take. We were constantly told that drugs will ruin your life. I'm not debating that drugs CAN ruin your life. But there are (AT LEAST -- because again, the numbers come from a government-conducted survey) twenty million people in the United States that smoke marijuana at least once a year, 6 million that smoke it on a weekly basis, 3 million that smoke it everyday -- and as far as I can tell, they're not causing widespread harm. I think it's fairly evident that not all of them are dying, killing people or getting pregnant. (And as I posted before, probably next to none of them are aiding terrorism, unless they also use cocaine or heroin in addition to their marijuana, and that's another whole issue entirely.)

I can tell you with complete certainty that because of DARE and similar propaganda techniques not unlike these commercials, I am jaded with the anti-drug movement. I do not know a single one of my friends who doesn't feel the same, even those who (like me) have chosen not to use drugs. I can't speak for every single member of my generation, but I have talked to people across the United States who went through similar programs, and not a single one says that DARE was an effective approach to anti-drug education. I'm sure there are those out there that feel that way. However, judging from what I've seen there aren't a whole lot of them.

I don't know how old those of you who are debating the other side are, but from what I've seen of your posts, most (all?) of you are old enough that you never went through DARE or the programs that imitated it. Unless you've been through it, I don't think you know what kind of techniques were used in them -- and as far as I can remember, they were very similar to brainwashing. My parents almost threatened to pull my sister out of DARE when she went through it four years after I did because they did not agree with the methods being used in the program. They were not the only parents to feel this way; in fact, DARE was discontinued at that school the year after my sister went through. I believe they use a different method of anti-drug education now.

I'm not disagreeing with you that there needs to be drug education in schools. I even agree that anti-marijuana commercials on TV are a good idea. But the way both programs are being carried out right now leaves a lot to be desired, and -- take it from somebody who's not too far from the target demographic of these commercials -- these commercials will alienate and disillusion many more teenagers than they help.

A much better approach would be to enlist teenagers themselves to help create and script these commercials. Teenagers can detect BS a mile away, and watching a middle-aged businessman's interpretation of what teenagers do, how they speak, and what their motives for using drugs or not using drugs just makes them laugh. The majority of today's teenagers do not take these commercials seriously -- the people who are producing these ads need to do a major rethinking of this if they actually want these ads to affect the majority of today's teenagers.

I'm Pro-Legal.

The fallacious logic that is used to show that marijuana is a gateway drug is something similar to this:

Assuming that all heroin users began by using marijuana:
Bob uses heroin.
Bob has used marijuana. <---- This statement is TRUE.

All heroin users began by using marijuana.
Bob has used marijuana.
Bob uses heroin. <---- If you follow the logic of the first statement, while not necessarily false, THIS is not necessarily TRUE. Perhaps he is still simply using marijuana.

This is a clever ploy that is used to show a correlation where one might not exist. While there could conceivably be a link, one is not INHERENT.

Many drug users may have very well began by using marijuana. But I can bet you that they also drank alcohol and/or smoked cigarettes. Why is marijuana singled out?

Furthermore, many people have used marijuana and never touched another drug.

C'mon now, that is grossly misleading.

Most people are so ill-informed that they are not aware that alcohol is ALSO a drug. And in fact, it is the true gateway drug.

If you ask an addict what was the first drug they ever tried, they would say Marijuana.

BUT, if you ask them when they took their first alcoholic drink it will almost always preceed their first joint.

The misinformation campaign is what disqualifies the ads. If we are afraid to touch teen alcoholism and jump right to the Mary Jane-bashing, we only ask addicts to by-pass it on their way to other drugs.

wow. you obviously have no experience with kids. and if you do, i dread what you tell or teach them.

kids are KIDS. they are impressionable and need to learn facts so they can make their own decisions later in life. that is the key. when they are OLDER is when they can sort out the facts for themselves.

and to whoever asked ages. i'll be 25 in 2 weeks. i went through DARE. never liked the whole acting out part of it, but whatever.

if you guys honestly think that DARE, a program designed to educate kids and scare them of consequences, will make kids pro-drugs in the future are just unbelievable.

please don't ever have children. and if you do, be afraid for their welfare.

an adult needs different messages than a child.

go smoke all the pot you want. i don't give a damn. but i will EDUCATE my kids of what CAN happen if they do drugs. educating them will not make them want to do drugs. that is faulty logic

you are correct. if i remember my math right (which i do;) ) :

T ---> T = T
F---> F = T
F ---> T = T
T ---> F = F

you can't flip those statements, it is purely mathematical. it won't work for any analogy, about drugs or flowers.

so that analogy doesn't work. i see where you were trying to go, but you can't use that logic in a mathematical sense.

having a liquor cabinet will make them...

I thought smoking pot impaired fertility. We can only hope.

Will all of you anti-marijuana people hush it?

I smoked trees religiously in my early teens and I turned out alright.



J/K

Cloud9 mentioned at the beginning of this topic that she has never smoked pot and doesn't intend to. And if you were referring to me in that blanket statement at the end there, I also mentioned more than once that I have never smoked either, nor do I plan to in the immediate future (as a runner, I have lungs to worry about). If you want your statements to be taken seriously, you should probably be more careful reading others'. Just because someone defends the use of marijuana does not mean they're a pothead, and anybody who equates the two is obviously running out of more effective arguments to make.

Other points:

I have actually worked with kids quite a bit. Fortunately I've never had to do an anti-drug program, and I don't ever plan to. I don't think it would be my calling.

As for teaching kids facts -- YES. Teach them facts. Do not teach them propaganda like what we're seeing in these commercials. "If you smoke marijuana you could aid and abet terrorism" is not a fact. It's not even true. "Marijuana can affect your memory" is a fact. Teach them the ramifications of smoking marijuana, but do not use scare tactics. And please, do not use things that are untrue! That's where the problems come in. If DARE or teachers or commercials teach children that buying marijuana supports terrorism, or that marijuana is psychologically addictive -- whenever kids find out that these are false (and they will, at some point) that's when they stop trusting anti-drug programs or the educators themselves.

Adults and children do need different messages. However, kids are a hell of a lot smarter than you seem to be giving them credit for. If a kid sees an anti-marijuana ad sandwiched between two alcohol ads -- he notices that, and he questions that. Trust me. But I think we've gotten off topic here. When discussing those commercials -- those are aimed at teenagers, from all I can tell. And teenagers DON'T need to be treated like children. If there's one thing that will get them rebelling the fastest, it's treating them like they're younger than they are.

Oh, and

"DARE demonstrated no effect on adolescents' use of alcohol, cigarettes, or inhalants, or on their future intentions to use these substances."

-- http://www.ndsn.org/FEB93/DARE.html

And a more recent article:

http://www.preventionnet.com/files/home46.cfm

Do a search; there are hundreds more articles like these out there.