Just Say No

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This article is about the anti-drug ad campaign. For the Larry Kramer play, see Just Say No (play).
Nancy Reagan at a "Just Say No" rally at the White House in 1986.
Nancy Reagan at a "Just Say No" rally at the White House in 1986.

"Just Say No" was a television advertising campaign, part of the US "War on Drugs" and prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s, to discourage children from engaging in recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying no. Eventually, this also expanded the realm of "Just Say No" to violence, premarital sex, and any other vices that young people might try. The slogan was created and championed by former First Lady Nancy Reagan during her husband's presidency.[1]

The campaign emerged from a National Institutes of Health–supported substance abuse prevention program pioneered in the 1970s by University of Houston Social Psychology Professor Dr. Richard I. Evans. Evans's social inoculation model encompassed "inoculating" students with skills to resist peer pressure and other social influences. The anti-drug movement was among the resistance skills recommended in response to low peer pressure, and Nancy Reagan's larger campaign proved to be a useful dissemination of this social inoculation strategy.[2]

"Just Say No" crossed over to the UK, where it was popularised by the BBC's 1986 "Drugwatch" campaign, which revolved around a heroin-addiction storyline in the popular children's TV drama serial Grange Hill. The cast's cover of the original US campaign song, with an added rap, reached the UK top ten [3]. In 2007 Justin Lee Collins presented a one off show on Channel 4 with the aim to reunite the 1986 Grange Hill cast and organized for them to perform 'Just Say No' one more time.

The campaign made its way into popular American culture when TV shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Punky Brewster produced episodes centered around the campaign. In 1987 La Toya Jackson became spokesperson for the campaign and recorded a song entitled "Just Say No" with British hit producers Stock/Aitken/Waterman.

The campaign drew some criticism for underestimating the drug use in America and reducing its solution to a catch phrase.[4] A reduction, however, in the use and trafficking of illegal drugs by adolescents was seen during the height of the campaign.[5][6]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mrs. Reagan's Crusade. Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
  2. ^ Evans, R.I. (in press). Just say no. In Breslow, L., Encyclopedia of Public Health (p. 1354). New York: Macmillan.
  3. ^ Malvern, Jack (December 12, 2003). Just say no. The Daily Summit. British Council.
  4. ^ Elliott, Jeff (May, 1993). Just say nonsense - Nancy Reagan's drug education programs. Washington Monthly.
  5. ^ Interview: Dr. Herbert Kleber. PBS Frontline. Retrieved on 2007-06-12. “The politics of the Reagan years and the Bush years probably made it somewhat harder to get treatment expanded, but at the same time, it probably had a good effect in terms of decreasing initiation and use. For example, marijuana went from thirty-three percent of high-school seniors in 1980 to twelve percent in 1991.”
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