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Study: Anti-pot Ads Are Dopey
Greg Gatlin | Boston Herald | 05/27/2005

Advertisements might work to warn young people off of cigarettes, but they're not buying it when it comes to anti-pot ads, a new study says.

The research, commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project, a group advocating pot decriminalization, says government-sponsored anti-marijuana ads aren't having the desired effect.

In fact, Texas State University researchers who conducted the study say the ads might actually ``boomerang'' - producing the opposite effect.

In the study, scientists had 123 Texas State University students watch both anti-pot and anti-tobacco ads.

Ads included a spot showing teens getting high in a car at a fast-food drive-thru, then unwittingly driving into a young girl on a bike.

Harvey Ginsberg, a Texas State University psychology professor and the study's senior author, said written responses from study participants were surprising.

"They wanted to know what kind of parents are letting a child ride on busy intersection unattended, and so forth,'' he said.

But a spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy dismissed the study as "sloppy science bought and paid for by the pro-marijuana legalization lobby.''

Spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said college students aren't the target audience for his group's advertising.

"We're trying to reach younger viewers in their teens,'' Lemaitre said. "We know if can reach that audience, we can prevent them from using drugs in the first place.''

Lemaitre added that ads are tested extensively on focus groups.

He claimed spots have made "a huge impact,'' pointing to an 18 percent drop in pot use over three years.

But Ginsberg said the government is crediting its advertising for a trend already in progress. Both marijuana and tobacco use reached in the 1990s and have since been falling.

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