| The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign | |
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In 1998, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) launched the ground-breaking National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign to educate and empower America’s youth to reject illicit drugs. With involvement critical to the Campaign’s success, the Parenting of Adolescents site at About has joined ONDCP’s initiative to help extend its anti-drug messages to it's community on the web.
- The Campaign’s five-year initiative to reduce and deglamorize youth drug use targets middle-school-age adolescents (approximately 11 to 13 years old), parents, and other influential adults.
- The integrated communications Campaign delivers anti-drug messages to kids and parents where they live, work, and play through advertising, the Internet, movies, music and television, public education efforts, and community partnerships.
- The Campaign is designed to support the anti-drug activities of the Parenting of Adolescents' site and public/private partnerships among schools, churches, civic organizations, and other groups, creating a vast community-based network to encourage kids to stay drug-free.
- The Campaign will spend about $180 million per year in advertising—and receive a pro bono match of equal value from the entertainment industry, media, corporations, and other advertisers—to expose young people to innovative anti-drug messages that reinforce the ads. For more than a year, TV ads have run nationwide during prime time.
- Nearly a year of research went into designing the Campaign. Hundreds of specialists were consulted, including experts in behavior change, drug prevention, teen marketing, and advertising communications, as well as representatives from professional, civic, and community organizations. The Campaign raises the bar for public service initiatives because of its unprecedented level of accountability. It will be constantly monitored, evaluated, and updated to ensure that it effectively reaches teens and their parents.
- Most teens do not use drugs (more than 56 percent of teenagers reported never trying pot).
- Getting high has negative consequences; staying drug-free has many positive consequences.
- Young people can learn how to make good decisions that help them resist negative peer pressure.
- There are positive ways young people can spend their time rather than wasting it on drugs.
- Every child, even yours, is at risk for drugs.
- Talk with your child about drugs.
- There are simple, effective actions parents can take to help children avoid drugs, such as:
- staying involved in a child’s activities and knowing his or her friends and parents
- making sure kids have after-school activities that are structured and supervised
- encouraging a child to follow the rules, or suffer negative consequences
at the Parenting of Adolescents Site |
