I'm all for warning tweens and young adults about the ills of illegal narcotics; tokers are jokers, if I am not mistaken. But what I'm for is warning the youth generation of the actual dangers of substance abuse. What AboveTheInfluence.com does is not this.
These commercials don't so much deter kids from smoking pot as make the venture seem almost trivial. AboveTheInfluence.com doesn't seem to take it very seriously. They're all done in some pseudo-Squiggy style of art that I'm sure has some deep psychological point to it, and they come up with the most absurdly condescending arguments for not smoking pot that one could possibly entertain, and then some. Take for example this gem:
Not again, indeed.
Let us recap:
- They feel the need to point out the weed to us. Thank you Oppenheimer, we would have never figured that out without your helpful insight.
- Clearly his girlfriend is morally disgusted with her man's "Cannib-antics." "Not again," she moans. I wonder why she's even with him at this point; smoking pot is bad, and the ad makes it abundantly implied that this guy has no other good qualities. Fuck him, he smokes Mary Jane.
- At that precise moment, an alien lands and decides to make human/extraterrestrial contact with the first schmoes he comes across. Yes, because this is a common occurrence in the lives of those who use drugs.
- Our misguided youth is presented with a fantastic honor, namely representing all of Earth to Mort here. What does he do? Of course, offer him pot. I'm sure he thought it was a very nice gesture.
- The alien, in what could have been on some other planet (that didn't have its head up its collective ass) a supreme cultural insult, refused the young man's token of good will. "No thanks, I'm clean" he seems to say with his alien mannerisms. He's been on the planet for six seconds and can't even seem to walk in a straight line, and yet he's somehow above the local customs. Though to be fair, he does have interstellar travel down pat.
- The girl loves this guy. So of course she flies away with him, to some sort of Space Make-Out Point I would presume. Never mind the guy. Never mind their relationship in any way. No, he smokes pot and the alien doesn't. This is enough to inspire within her nethers romantic feelings for a member of a different species. And yet I can't land a date to save my life.
All their ads are to some degree or another similar to this one. Many of them seem to include this judgmental little shit of a dog. Just an aside, I would probably retort, "Fuck you, you're a dog. You lick your own ass" (FYI, that comeback is appropriate to any scenario where a dog verbally suggests that he is better than you).
These ads bug me, but they are not the only anti-substance ones that do. Many of the commercials in this same vein just overdo it. Back in SMUt I addressed, in my very first Ad Nauseum entry, Stupid.ca, which was an anti-smoking agency that ran an ad campaign in incongruity. The point was to show how much more likely it was to die of smoking than it was to die of some other malady, such as hunting accidents, consuming antifreeze, or bathing with a toaster. Well, if I may wax poetic for a moment, duh. Of course smoking kills more people than bathtub electrocution. Millions of people smoke, but it is very rare for someone to be compelled, while bathing, to consume a bagel. Sure, Antifreeze has fewer deadly chemicals than cigarettes, but there's enough of that one chemical in, say, a bowl of the stuff to kill one instantly.
My point is that if we're going to scare kids into not touching drugs, we should do it with an air of truth. Let us not insult their intelligence. I would think there are enough reasons not to use heroine that we needn't make up any new ones.
And you know, if you have to make up tall tales about aliens and antifreeze and emotionally distant dogs in order to convince people not to use it, and there are no legitimate reasons to avoid it, maybe it's a message that doesn't need to be said. I have no interest in drugs, but if I did, I'd have no qualms about using pot. It's chemically non-addictive, its effects are mild, and its death potential is nill. It's probably a less dangerous depressant than alcohol is. Its only real danger is that it is currently illegal. This whole movement stinks of those anal-retentive Christian Right do-gooders who can't offer anything else to society than complaint.
Kids will be kids. They are going to experiment, the consequences be damned. And the psychology of young people tends to favor the activities authority figures condemn. "Fuck you, you're not the boss of me!" That sort of thing. It seems to me that in trying to vilify things like smoking pot, especially with these brain-dead commercials like the ones from AboveTheInfluence.com, they have only succeeded in making the drug even more appealing. Anything this lame had to come from squares who don't know how to have a good time, the hip cats will say. To be cool, we'd better do the opposite, Daddy-O!
- Silent G
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