Do Anti-Drug Ads Keep Kids Off Drugs?

Carson Wagner, now an assistant professor of journalism at Ohio University, wrote his 1998 Penn State master's thesis in media studies on the counter-intuitive effects of anti-drug ads. He demonstrated that for some kids, seeing anti-drug ads made them curious about what doing drugs would be like, even if they had never had that curiosity before.

When anti-drug ads say "don't do drugs," they inherently bring up the implicit question "should I do drugs?" The ads can draw attention to a gap in what the viewer knows about drugs, making them more curious. It's like when you miss a call from an unknown number -- the phone ringing prompts you to wonder "who was it?"

In a 2008 study, participants who were primed with anti-drug PSAs were more curious about using drugs than those that hadn't seen the PSAs. Wagner and his co-author, S. Shyam Sundar, found that because anti-drug ads made the viewer think more about drugs, it could also lead them to believe drug use is more prevalent than it really is. "These results should be seriously considered, as it has been consistently recognized in psychological research that curiosity is one of the most potent motivational forces for human behavior," the paper warned.

Advertising is normally all about grabbing your attention, but Wagner says that's a bad way to reduce drug use. The "drugs fuel terrorism" ads that ran during the 2002 Superbowl certainly garnered more ridicule than anything else:

From: popsci