NEWS: SMH - 12//12/08 'Ice ads too scary to be effective, study says'

[hoptis]

Ice ads too scary to be effective, study says
Kate Benson Medical Reporter
December 12, 2008

GRAPHIC television advertisements that show crystal methamphetamine users being raped, threatening to kill their parents and prostituting themselves make teenagers four times more likely to approve of using the drug regularly rather than scaring them into avoiding it, an Australian study has found.

The ads, shown in the United States, are similar to a Federal Government-funded television campaign aired in Australia last year, which showed young people being arrested, picking at scabs and facing unemployment, but researchers say their studies have proven they are too graphic to be taken seriously and are a waste of money.

The Montana Meth Project, a national drug prevention program based in the north-western US state, saturated the national market with 45,000 ads on television, 35,000 on radio, 10,000 in print and 1000 on billboards between 2005 and this year, and claimed its shock tactics reduced ice use in the state by 45 per cent in teenagers and 72 per cent in adults.

But researchers at the University of Western Australia studied feedback from thousands of teenagers exposed to the campaign and found a threefold increase in the percentage of teenagers who said they did not believe using ice was risky and a fourfold increase in those who strongly approved of regular ice use. Half thought the campaign exaggerated the risks.

"They look at those ads and they don't see themselves or their friends because the first few times they use ice they simply feel euphoria," the lead researcher, David Erceg-Hurn, said yesterday.

"They are not becoming prostitutes or killing their parents, so they reject the message. These ads could be backfiring, and it's time we looked at a new approach."

The findings are published in the journal Prevention Science, but Paul Fishlock, the creative director of The Campaign Palace, the advertising agency responsible for last year's Australian anti-ice advertisements and graphic anti-smoking ads featuring arteries full of plaque and mouths of rotten teeth, disputed claims that shock tactics did not work.

"There are cases where you can get too graphic and distance people from the message you are trying to deliver, but shock tactics do have their place and we have seen that most effectively in our anti-tobacco ads," he said.

Crystal methamphetamine use has been declining in NSW in recent years, according to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre's 2007 drug trends report, but Sydney hospital emergency departments are still experiencing a surge in the number of people presenting with ice-related psychosis and injuries.

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report last year revealed that one in five Australians aged in their 20s had tried methamphetamines, and of those aged 14 and over, 9 per cent had used methamphetamines in their lifetime.

But reducing shock tactics in advertising could reduce those figures further, Mr Erceg-Hurn said.

"We can do better. Graphic ads just don't hit home."

Sydney Morning Herald

 

[PsiloSubNaut]

Interesting

 

[Pistachio]

Authorities seems to do their best at destroying their own credibility. Pretty early in a persons life we learn that anti-drug propaganda is mostly lies and idiocy, then we find hard to believe what any authority tells us. Way to go make us cynical.

 

[Mr Blonde]

So the gist of the article is that because when users first try meth they feel euphoria, they doubt the veracity of the claims made by authorities regarding the risks.

Yet these same tactics, when applied to tobacco, appear to have worked to some extent; anyone want to venture a guess as to why?

 

[static_mind]

lol

I was alseep on the couch at my mums house when one of the speed ads came on. I must have picked up on it in my sleep because I started babbeling in my sleep at how stupid the ads were and how no one I know would quit because of the ads.

At this point I just became awake enough to relise what was going on and that my mother was stareing at me. I speiled of about how smokeing ads were rubbish too and it was nothing more then PR stunts so it looks like the government is trying when really there got no ideas left.

Don't think it covered well

 

[hoptis]

Fears drug campaign cuts no ice with teens
Cathy O'Leary
December 15, 2008

A UNIVERSITY of Western Australia researcher has called for the scrapping of a multimillion-dollar anti-methamphetamine campaign by the Federal Government, after finding that graphic advertisements actually made the illicit drug more appealing to teenagers.

A study by clinical psychology researcher David Erceg-Hurn found that a similar American campaign warning of violent behaviour and self-harm associated with crystal methamphetamine had the opposite effect to what was intended, making the drug appear less risky to young people.

The review, published in the international journal Prevention Science, found that after six months of exposure to an expensive anti-ice advertising campaign in the American state of Montana, three times as many teenagers believed using ice was not risky.

The teenagers were also four times more likely to strongly approve of regular methamphetamine use after the campaign and half thought the advertisements had exaggerated the risks of using the drug.

Mr Erceg-Hurn said the campaign was very similar to that used in the third phase of Australia's National Drugs Campaign, which was launched last year and based on the slogan "Don't let ice destroy you".

He said the results from his study suggested that the shock advertisements could be making the drug seem more acceptable and less harmful.

WEST AUSTRALIAN

The Age

 

[chugs]

So the gist of the article is that because when users first try meth they feel euphoria, they doubt the veracity of the claims made by authorities regarding the risks.

Yet these same tactics, when applied to tobacco, appear to have worked to some extent; anyone want to venture a guess as to why?

Because the realities of smoking are far to credible to ignore vs the adverse consequence of using ice which are blow completely out of proportion by the state.

That said the recent run of alcohol ads are close to the reality of what occurs with teenage drinking, and yet i don't feel like they'll do much to stop it from occurring.

 

[fortehlulz]

The only place I see the anti Ice posters I used to see in a lot of pub toilets is on people's walls cause they nicked them and thought they were hilarious. Ads do sweet F.A.

Who remembers the HIV ads with the grim reaper bowling? Wow... terrifying.... not.

 

[WILDSTRAWBERRIES]

So the gist of the article is that because when users first try meth they feel euphoria, they doubt the veracity of the claims made by authorities regarding the risks.

Yet these same tactics, when applied to tobacco, appear to have worked to some extent; anyone want to venture a guess as to why?

Personally, I think its because the dangers of tobacco have been well known for decades, and since it was such a popular habbit the general community have accepted it.

Ice, on the other hand, is dangerously underestimated because of lack of education. Teenagers are educating themselves by trying it, and thinking "this is no where near as bad as they made it out to be..."

I've lost family members to disease related to smoking, and I'm sure alot of people have. How many family members have you lost to meth?

 

[fortehlulz]

Ice, on the other hand, is dangerously underestimated because of lack of education. Teenagers are educating themselves by trying it, and thinking "this is no where near as bad as they made it out to be..."

I've lost family members to disease related to smoking, and I'm sure alot of people have. How many family members have you lost to meth?

Ask that question in 15 more years. It astonishes me how wide spread the appeal of ice is.

 

[js2k6]

the ads are far from effective.
theyre far from reality

i love my shards. but unlike these adverts, i've never pushed my mum over in a fit of meth rage.
in fact i get more euphoric from ice than i do from ecstasy. and i've been using it on and off for 6 years now.

the worst i've ever had was shadow people and dark hallucinations after 5 days without food or sleep on a shard / pill bender.
and when it finally come time to sleep. i started getting jumpy and eventually wound up crying over a misunderstanding between me and a good friend.

and all this crap about ice users being violent. a group of 5 of us, leaving a club in melbourne. sharded as fuck.
we're trying to get a taxi. and not having any luck at all.
try to call and book one and get told by dispatch to just go to crown and wait at the taxi rank.
as we're standing there, some drunken dickhead decides it's his duty to start slinging shit and try to start a fight with us.

maybe he didnt realise that two of us were standing over 6 feet tall and were cracked out as fuck. but still.. we didnt bother to retaliate.

i mean.. i was on ice. isn't it just an effect of the drug that i'm gonna get violent and attack everything on sight without provocation?

its not just the chosen method of ingestion either. three out of the 5 crushed and railed their stuff, while the other two love the crackie instead.

but rather than fall into the much advertised... and widely accepted role of the stereotypically violent scummy crackhead / ice fiend. we just told him to gtfo and we went on our merry way.

 

[ayjay]

^spot on. Drugs don't make you do shit that you wouldn't do anyway (except maybe benzos.... )

The anti-drug ads just freak the kiddies out. At least with the alcohol ads, they show people having a good time before things go pear shaped. With illicit drugs, the ads never show anyone having a good time, and I think that's a big part of their uselessness.

As far as changes in tobacco smoking - I think that it would be difficult to demonstrate that any advertising campaign had any effect in changes in smoking rates. Just because the ads have been around while smoking rates go down, doesn't mean the ads caused the change....

 

[Mr Blonde]

I've lost family members to disease related to smoking, and I'm sure alot of people have. How many family members have you lost to meth?

I haven't lost any family members to either; I used to know someone though who is now in a way 'lost' to meth in that he is fucking crazy, in and out of jail and the last time I saw him he was living on the streets.

The only place I see the anti Ice posters I used to see in a lot of pub toilets is on people's walls cause they nicked them and thought they were hilarious. Ads do sweet F.A.

Who remembers the HIV ads with the grim reaper bowling? Wow... terrifying.... not.

Ha, yeah I've got a few of those little 'tip of the iceberg' business card things you could get from clubs and bars that told you the dangers of meth use, don't know why though. Wish I'd gotten a poster. :D

I thought the Grim Reaper commercials were considered fairly effective? To be honest I don't think I was even born when they were shown (1987 I think?), but I've read in at least a few articles that the ads helped contribute to a lowered rate of HIV infections in Oz.

 

[static_mind]

The new anti drinking ads, has anyone found them to be good for a laugh?

Like when he throws a punch and hits that chick in the face by mistake, that was great.

Or when the chick gets drunk and has sex....a rather good night in my opinion Advertiseing promoteing alcohol with sex is illigal. So the givernment thinks itl try the same thing

 

[TekRa]

the ads are far from effective.
theyre far from reality

i love my shards. but unlike these adverts, i've never pushed my mum over in a fit of meth rage.
in fact i get more euphoric from ice than i do from ecstasy. and i've been using it on and off for 6 years now.

the worst i've ever had was shadow people and dark hallucinations after 5 days without food or sleep on a shard / pill bender.
and when it finally come time to sleep. i started getting jumpy and eventually wound up crying over a misunderstanding between me and a good friend.

and all this crap about ice users being violent. a group of 5 of us, leaving a club in melbourne. sharded as fuck.
we're trying to get a taxi. and not having any luck at all.
try to call and book one and get told by dispatch to just go to crown and wait at the taxi rank.
as we're standing there, some drunken dickhead decides it's his duty to start slinging shit and try to start a fight with us.

maybe he didnt realise that two of us were standing over 6 feet tall and were cracked out as fuck. but still.. we didnt bother to retaliate.

i mean.. i was on ice. isn't it just an effect of the drug that i'm gonna get violent and attack everything on sight without provocation?

its not just the chosen method of ingestion either. three out of the 5 crushed and railed their stuff, while the other two love the crackie instead.

but rather than fall into the much advertised... and widely accepted role of the stereotypically violent scummy crackhead / ice fiend. we just told him to gtfo and we went on our merry way.

Yeah I gotta say I don't understand that whole ice = aggression thing. I mean I am presuming it must happen to some people, but my opinion is that it is more likely to be people that may have those tendencies anyway.

Not that I am trying to sound like I'm on my high horse, but I have smoked shard on a recreational basis for probably 4 years and neither I, nor any of the many people i know/have known take the stuff have gotten aggressive. To me people seem to be more chill and talk a LOT lol.

I guess it is probably a different story if you are fully addicted to the stuff, however I still think that is more likely to be associated with sleep dep than the drug itself.

But anyway... that's just my 2c

 

[ayjay]

I thought the Grim Reaper commercials were considered fairly effective? To be honest I don't think I was even born when they were shown (1987 I think?), but I've read in at least a few articles that the ads helped contribute to a lowered rate of HIV infections in Oz.

They have had a positive rave recently - but basically all I think they did was increase poofter bashing. We kept HIV rates low in Australia by some really dedicated targetted safe sex campaigns within the gay community, and by introducing needle syringe programs. The ads did fuck all - except show that the gov'mint is "doing something" - same goes for the current batch of anti-drug ads.

 

[js2k6]

after the weekend just gone.

all the "overdoses" at xQlusive... how many of them were the result of ice?
not a single mention of anyone OD'ing on the shards.
in fact, noone OD'ing from pills.

if you read the reports / papers it's all about GHB / GBL / 14,b
or "GBH" "fantasy" or "liquid ecstasy" (which i've not heard anyone call it since i was sold some back in 2002 and assumed it would be like a pill... 5ml later... blowing out on a chair. needless to say never touched the shit again) as the uneducated misguided retards the herald sun and the age hire to be their reporters would call it.

so maybe, just maybe.. these "ice is a dirty drug" ads need to be ditched like the ineffective useless pieces of shit that they are.
and maybe warn people about the dangers of juice. and i'm not referring to the "date rape" side...

just go onto youtube. get some videos of people actually blowing out. and show it for what it really is.

 

[js2k6]

The new anti drinking ads, has anyone found them to be good for a laugh?

Like when he throws a punch and hits that chick in the face by mistake, that was great.

Or when the chick gets drunk and has sex....a rather good night in my opinion Advertiseing promoteing alcohol with sex is illigal. So the givernment thinks itl try the same thing

^^^^^

LOL
omg. YES. i have pissed myself laughing. and wondered if it's now ok for me to drink a few cans and smack some girl in the face.
or even root someone in a bush.

either way. it'd be an entertaining night.

 

[claire22]

i checked out this 'montana meth' & looked at the videos, what a load of shit is all i can say.
i've been an addict for over six years, but i certainly wasn't hooked from the first little go, it takes a bit longer for addiction to come! plus i have never acted violent towards anyone, never stolen things from my mother then pushed her over in a shard-fueled rage.
its all stereotyping! and notice how bloody awful they make them look, like they have no soul. plus the physical characteristics are a bit out of whack, i sure don't look like that (it has a lot to do with hygiene!)
scare tactics DO NOT WORK WITH DRUGS! they have tried this with heroin,crack,e's.. any of them successful? fuck no.
if people are unlucky enough to come into shard connections, they will just see (typically) a bunch of people having fun. those people will tell the newbie "we arent addicted" (when they possibly are, possibly aren't), they will learn from people with real-life experiences rather than government bullshit with is all over-dramatic. it CAN happen, definitely, but they are extreme cases.
people still smoke even though there is all that crap over the boxes. why?
people refuse to believe that can happen to them, they hear the stories of people living to 90 yrs old having been heavy smokers, and think they may be in that lucky category
it is the same with meth, all 'hard' drugs. i for one know i certainly didn't want to believe that would be me.
plus smoking would have a higher success rate with the 'scare tactics' as many know a person who has died from the effects of cigarettes, plus it does not provide a 'rush' like meth (well admittedly it slightly does but nothing compared to stimulants)
i don't think ANY government campaign is going to stop people experimenting with meth, however ghastly & real it may be, people still refuse to believe the truth!!!!
we humans are an ignorant race, makes me fucking laugh