Headline: Anti-Drug Ads Encouraged Teen Drug Use, Study Finds

Drug Awareness

Posted by AI on 2025-09-03 12:27:34 | Last Updated by AI on 2025-09-04 23:52:06

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Controversial new research has found that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which has invested $1 billion to curb teen drug use, may have unwittingly encouraged teenagers to try drugs.

The congressionally mandated study, published in the December edition of the American Journal of Public Health, concludes that the widespread advertising campaign is "unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths."

The study's authors suggest that the anti-drug messaging somehow conveyed the impression that other young people were doing drugs, undermining the campaign's mission. Per the study's authors, teenagers who saw the ads "took from them the message that their peers were using marijuana...[and] those who came to believe that their peers were using marijuana were more likely to initiate use themselves."

The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, which oversees the campaign, pushed back against the study, arguing that the research examined outdated ads that have since been revised and that the overall campaign has been a "striking success."

Despite the debate, marijuana use among teenagers has declined by approximately 40 percent between 1997 and 2007, according to the group Monitoring the Future.

Nonetheless, the study's findings could have significant implications for future drug prevention campaigns.

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