A recent study published in Addictive Behaviors has concluded that watching the US government’s anti-marijuana television ads actually reduced aversion to the drug less than watching their anti-tobacco campaigns.
The study was cenetred around the attitudes of 229 college students towards tobacco and marijuana.
After showing half the students regular science programs with various anti-tobacco ads and the other hald regular science programming with various anti-marijuana ads, “attitudes to marijuana became less negative among students that watched anti-marijuana ads than the group with anti-tobacco ads.”
While the study has its own implications for the producers of the ads, others have capitalised on the finding of the study to attack the government over its use of the contracting firm Fleishman-Hillard.
Whichever way you look at this one, there are certainly a few questions to be answered about the effectiveness of the campaigns as a deterrant.
If in fact, the ad are not having the desired impact then it may well be time to both look at their content and open the tendering process to a new firm.
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