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"Truth Anti-Smoking" ads most insidious thing on television?
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If you're hanging out with a bunch of people and they're all drinking, and you don't want to, and you feel pressured, that's not alcohol's fault, and it's not the other peoples' fault, it's your own damn fault for not having any willpower. No one is pressuring you except yourself.
So really they should just have willpower PSAs.
That's the spirit. Let's tell those teenagers to just suck it up and stop being such pussies. :roll:
Isn't that exactly what the spirit of the "say no to peer pressure" PSAs should be?
Note I say should, as I readily acknowledge that not all of them do this successfully.
So by making this statement, what are you advocating? Leave the drinkers/smokers alone! It's not their fault you feel pressured around them? Bullshit! I like my friends, and just because they smoke pot a little more than I'd like them to doesn't make them assholes and it doesn't mean I should feel like I need to find new friends. I do, however, want them to be educated as to my right to choose to not partake of their "hobby" (as some have put it) without feeling like I'm somehow in the wrong for making my own decisions. This is what "pressure" means, to feel excluded from a group because of a choice you choose to make. This should not happen.
Well it's better than telling them that EVIL PEOPLE are going to pressure them into doing EVIL DRUGS and it will RUIN THEIR LIVES.
Or we could talk to them about resisting peer pressure.
Either that, or use those scary as fuck Montana Meth ads to convince them to never leave the house.
If you're hanging out with your friends and they decide to stop in a cafe, are you being "peer pressured" into drinking coffee? After all, coffee is about as bad for you as weed is.
On Halloween, do you feel "peer pressured" into eating a lot of candy? After all, eating shit-tons of candy is about as bad, if not worse, for you as weed is.
No? Then why the fuck is pot any different? If you don't want a coffee, don't have a coffee, if you don't want candy, don't eat candy, if you don't want to smoke pot, don't take a hit. No one is going to give a shit. Grow a spine and stop whining about "peer pressure".
It shouldn't happen with regard to sex either. Or wearing specific high-dollar labels for the sake of the label. Or a million other things teenagers agonize over feeling like they're required to do to be socially acceptable. But we single out drugs every last time, without exception. These aren't anti-peer-pressure PSAs.
Because some things are more damaging then others perhaps?
I'm pretty sure it's because they're not anti peer-pressure PSAs. They're anti-drug PSAs.
People never ask why you don't drink coffee though. It's never a big deal. I go to a starbucks on a regular basis and they know I don't drink coffee but they've never asked why. And there are other things to order at a cafe besides coffee, not so much at a bar. When you go to a bar with people, where the main activity is drinking the n people get all up in your grill. It's pressure from a social group because I'm an anomaly, I'm not making it up. It's not bad when you're going with people who know you don't drink and then you don't have to give them a life story as to why. It's also odd being the only person not drinking. It's like going to a go-kart track and everyone is riding around, but you aren't.
Obviously I have willpower or I would have cracked a long time ago.
And saying that there's no peer pressure to drink coffee is pretty dumb.
But you see it's okay though because coffee isn't magic like drugs.
Well, the serious answer is it's not okay at all, really. Caffeine is the most abused drug in the western world, and it has some seriously deleterious effects, particularly on children, and yet it is completely unregulated.
But if everyone's doing coffee, why doesn't she find someone else to do it with?
I will also admit to this happening in party situations too. If I turn down a drink and say "nah, I'm good", sometimes, someone I'm with might go "you know what, me too". This, however, is not the norm, and pressure exists.
Just because situations exist where its possible you won't feel pressured does not invalidate the fact that people feel pressured to conform in social situations.
This does not make the pressured a weakling nor does it make the pressurers douchebags, it's just normal social interaction.
The aim of some anti-drug campaigns purport to educate young people into believing that you don't have to feel bad about yourself if you resist peer pressure. This, the anti-drug advocates argue, is especially important because they believe drugs have more serious reprecussions in their use than say, coffee or a movie or whatever.
Now, we can turn this into another drug thread and argue about the dangers of drugs, but I do believe the purpose of this thread is to talk about PSAs and their relevance / successfullness or what have you.
My stance is that a PSA telling someone that they don't have to cave to peer pressure is a positive message. Regardless of your stance on drugs/smoking, I think we can all agree that someone partaking in those substances for irreponsible reasons (i.e. peer pressure) might be ill prepared for the consequences.
Anyone arguing that there are no consequences to drug use, alcohol or tobacco, in my opinion, are being willfully obtuse.
Now, VC, I understand that you're against drug legislation, that's fine, you're entitled to that, but just because some people think differently than you doesn't automatically make them subversive assholes that are trying to "trick" people into thinking like them.
I like to give creators of PSAs a certain degree of benefit of the doubt in that, misguided though they might sometimes be, they don't have some kind of evil agenda behind their campaigns.
I'll agree with you on the ridiculousness of some PSAs. You're right, some of them are entirely misguided in how they try to communicate their message, this thread has aptly demonstrated that and I couldn't agree more. But not all of them are, and those are the ones I'm defending.
This is one of the greatest things I have ever seen.
"They're animals anyway. Let them lose their souls."
Or maybe the barristas don't give a fuck about what their customers do or don't do.
You are a living, breathing buzzkill.
Edit: Oh and PSAs are probably a silly way to do it
Until, at least, I realized that cigarettes are horribly overpriced.
Movie Voice Announcer: For decades the United States has run ads, trying to protect the youth of America from a great threat.
(images of the various anti smoking ads as patriotic music plays)
Movie voice announcer: A perfectly legal threat, one available at any gas station.
(quick cuts from a gas station to the inside where the cigarettes are held. Shots of skeletons mixed in)
Movie voice announcer: A threat that the government benefits from every day.
(A shot of a receipt, slowly panning down to the tax.
Movie voice announcer: It's time to actually take care of this threat, and illegalize cigarettes once an for all.
(a shot of the grand canyon. Tom Hanks walks in)
Hanks: Hi, I'm Tom Hanks. For years the U.S. Government has sent mixed messages to the youth of America on cigarettes. It's time to stop that. Lets together illegalize the sale of cigarettes in the United States. Because if someone can't get cigarettes, they can't start smoking in the first place.
Oh, and there is another one where there are 4 stoned black guys in a crappy car pulling through a drive-thru saying "I'll take like 20 cheeseburgers! ......oh shit I aint got any money. You got any money man? Nah" and they drive forward and hit a little girl riding her tricycle.
Instead we show stupid ads that don't work, ban smoking almost everywhere, and tax the hell out of smokers.
Seriously, if smoking is such a problem we should outright ban it instead of slowly making it impossible for smokers.
Are you talking about prohibition?
I'm certain that he is.
Well, what would be effective? Because what we're doing now isn't.
Here's a study from the NYT that says from 1996 to 2001 smoking in teens sharply declined.
Study by the same people from U of M says that the decline in teen smoking levelled off in 2006
VC is insinuating that prohibition would be effective
What? No. Prohibition was NOT effective.
I still find that drawing a line in the sand and getting this over and done with fast would be the best method.
If things keep going the way they're going smoking will practically be banned outright anyway. A lot of states are starting to ban in it public places. Places of employment have started to force employees to either quit smoking or be fired. Taxes on smoking are going up across the country.
If we're going to do everything in our power to make it impossible for people to smoke, why not just outright ban it? Wouldn't it make more sense?
It's not like alcohol or marijuana. It doesn't make you feel good. By the time you're addicted you no longer get a nicotine buzz. The only thing that keeps people doing it is the addiction and the ritual (and in some cases, like myself, the ability to hamper ADD). I really think a outright ban on cigarettes wouldn't lead to the same type of things as the prohibition on alcohol or the illegalization of marijuana. It would be like banning aspirin, it doesn't have a strong enough effect on how you feel to be popular if illegalized.