STUDENTS TAKING ACTION, NOT DRUGS

Getting Smart About Drugs
Growing up in the new millennium is hard. While the stresses of adolescence are unchanging, the environment in which young people live is vastly different than the social world of teens in earlier times. Nearly two-thirds of American young people think life will be worse in ten years. Learning to cope with the stress is one of the most important tasks of adolescence-- and the stresses young people experience around relationships, families, school and work life are substantial.  

More young people are using drugs to temporarily alleviate the stress they experience in their lives. Thirty-one percent of high school seniors have used marijuana, according to a recent study. And only 65 percent of kids think there is any danger associated with marijuana use, down from 79 percent in 1991. Young people who use marijuana regularly, with or without other illicit drugs, have higher rates of skipping school, fighting, delinquency, arrests and health problems than their counterparts. Teenagers who use marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than their counterparts who do not use marijuana.
 
Dangerous Messages  
By the time a teen hits age 18, he or she will have seen thousands of messages for alcohol, presented through attractive, fast-paced, humorous messages. These messages make beer drinking seem a normal part of social life, connected to sports activities, something that people of all ages and races partake in. But beer commercials don't tell the whole story about alcohol use. Alcohol use kills teens by leading to violence, driving accidents, and unprotected sex. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers, and nearly 60 percent of all fatal accidents involve alcohol.  

And Joe Camel, Virginia Slims and Kool cigarette ads are highly visible in the magazines teens read, on billboards, and at sports events. With 3,000 adolescents becoming regular users each day, advertising contributes to maintaining the false belief that smoking is a normal activity, when in fact, it is a highly addictive and health-destroying activity that kills over 400,000 people each year.  

While there are no advertising messages about illegal drugs, young people are exposed to many media messages which talk about drugs and drug use in a favorable way. Teens find pro-drug messages in the lyrics of popular music, in humorous references to drug use and getting high in TV comedy shows, and even in the "altered states" that are sometimes shown in the process of selling soft drinks, sneakers or snack products. By making drug use seem funny, these media messages can reinforce a belief that drug use is harmless fun, a great way to escape from stress. The reality of drug use is that it destroys people's lives. According to General Barry McCaffery, President Clinton's chief drug advisor, in the 1990s alone, illegal drug use has cost America more than $300 billion and more than 100,000 people dead. One-third of all property crimes, assaults and murders have a drug connection.  

Over and over, the mass media reinforce the false belief that consuming products can take away all pain and stress, making you feel truly alive. But the media doesn't often show us that the best ways to reduce stress and feel truly alive is not by consuming a product-- but doing something meaningful, like being with people, learning, being creative, exercising, taking action in the world.  

Getting Smart About Media  
There are two ways to gain skills that will enhance people's critical thinking skills about the mass media. One is to carefully analyze media messages, looking closely at the techniques used to convey meaning. Another is to gain experience in making one's own media messages. Both these approaches help people to better understand the ways that media messages are constructed.  

Media literacy is the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a variety of different forms. Media literacy skills help us distinguish between fact and opinion, claims backed up by evidence and those which use emotions. Media literacy skills help us recognize how and why messages appeal to us, sharpening our awareness of the unstated but implied messages that are behind the statements we read, see or hear in the media. Media literacy skills increase our ability to choose messages effectively, to evaluate the quality and accuracy of what we watch, see and read.

Why Study And Create Public Service Advertising?  
Americans are surrounded by a sea of advertising messages. Teens see 400 commercials every day. These messages promote the benefits of a near endless stream of products, and they work. Ads are used by the business community, politicians, anyone who wants to influence public opinion. They help us learn about new products, new ideas, and they reinforce our existing beliefs, too.

But ads work best when they build associations between products and our feelings. They attract our attention by linking a product to our feelings, our closest and most intimate relationships, our natural drives and needs. Some have said that advertising is a 20th century art form. Others have called it the most effective propaganda system ever created.

Public service advertising represents a genre or category of messages that are not explored very often in schools. Teachers have ambivalent attitudes about advertising that often lead them to ignore these 'texts' in the classroom. But teaching about advertising can fit very effectively into the context of language arts, social studies, journalism, health education, music and the visual arts. Given the pervasiveness of advertising in our culture, young people need more opportunities (not fewer) to learn about and discuss the complex functions of advertising in our lives.