“I Learned it by WatchingYOU!” The Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the Attack on “Responsible Use” Education in the 1980s

Abstract

In the mid-1980s the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) began the largest privately run public-service campaign in history. Turning their day jobs upside down, professional advertisers exhorted young people to resist the temptations of some of the most sought after, if illegal, consumer goods in the country. In doing so they entered a long-running debate in educational circles about how best to teach adolescents about drugs. As one scholar puts it, instruction has pivoted between the Just Say No of abstinence favored by conservatives, and a more information-based Just Say Know philosophy that liberals hope will help students make responsible choices. This analysis of over 40 public service announcements (PSAs) aired widely between 1987 and 1991 reveals how the Partnership aligned closely with the conservatives. Its compelling narratives depicted the perils of drugs and demonstrated why even casual use leads inexorably to serious injury or death. Unlike typical producers of curricular materials, however, many in the Partnership faced a unique difficulty in disseminating that message--their business ties to producers of legal drugs. The PDFA's ads thus came to rest on an unspoken distinction between the hazards of illicit substances, which were skillfully dramatized, and those of licit ones, which had to be ignored. That inconsistency provoked heated criticism as it exposed fault lines in the War on Drugs and Reagan era politics more generally, which uneasily balanced laissez-faire economics with calls for individual responsibility and a return to traditional values. Language: en