cannabisnews.com: Ad Campaign Targets Notions of 'Love Drug'





Ad Campaign Targets Notions of 'Love Drug'
Posted by FoM on February 11, 2002 at 09:52:39 PT
By Donna Leinwand, USA Today
Source: USA Today
A national advertising campaign that debuts Monday will try to scrape the shiny, happy gloss from the Ecstasy drug craze. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America's first-ever focus on Ecstasy, as seen through a series of public service advertisements on TV and in newspapers, represents a watershed moment in the national response to the club drug. Experts say Ecstasy is taking root in youth culture and an aggressive, concerted campaign is needed to unsell the drug to a growing number of captivated youth. 
The ads will confront the notions of Ecstasy as a harmless "love drug" whose benefits far outweigh the risks. One ad targeted at parents portrays a grieving father, Jim Heird, whose daughter, Danielle, 21, of Las Vegas, died the third time she used Ecstasy."I would've given anything for some warning signs. I would have moved. I would have locked her up. I don't care," Heird says in the commercial. "A parent's not supposed to survive their children. It's not the scheme of things."In another ad, a coroner reads Danielle Heird's autopsy report while a photo collage of a happy, healthy Danielle crosses the screen.One of a second set of commercials, which is aimed at teenagers, depicts a dance rave in which a girl on Ecstasy lies crumpled on the floor while her friends continue dancing around her. Another ad depicts a house party where kids high on Ecstasy make out and massage one another. When one boy becomes ill and crawls into a bathroom, a friend merely shuts the bathroom door. The tag lines at the end of each ad read, "Ecstasy: Where's the love?"The drug, 3-4 methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, or MDMA, was initially used in psychotherapy. It emerged as a recreational drug on college campuses in the mid-1980s, says Glen Hanson, acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md. It spread through the rave party scene in the early 1990s."It's not just a little fad. It's a very disturbing trend," says Mitchell Rosenthal, president of the Phoenix House Foundation, the nation's largest drug-treatment provider.In a new survey of teen drug use, the partnership found that teens view the drug as only slightly more dangerous than alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and inhalants. Drug experts worry Ecstasy will spread like cocaine did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, spawning a generation of addicts faster than health officials could issue warnings."By then, we were so deep in the well, it took a long time to climb back out," says Stephen Pasierb, president of the partnership. It wasn't until college basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose that teens began to see the scary side of cocaine use, Pasierb says.Now, as with cocaine, teens seem unaware or unimpressed by the growing body of scientific evidence that Ecstasy is dangerous.Scientists have studied extensively Ecstasy's effect on laboratory animals. Human clinical studies are underway, says George Ricaurte, an associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.The animal studies indicate that using Ecstasy in doses equivalent to amounts that people usually take can damage the brain's serotonin cells. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter involved in appetite, sleep, mood regulation, memory and sexual function.Ricaurte says the data in animals are "extraordinarily strong" that brain damage occurs. He says it is highly likely the same effects will be borne out in humans."One of the most insidious aspects of this particular drug is it could be damaging cells without any warning that the damage is taking place," Ricaurte says. "Any drug that has the wherewithal to damage a nerve cell in the brain has to be regarded with extreme care and caution. Nerve cells in the brain don't grow back."Questions remain about how high a dose causes damage and whether some people are more prone to damage than others. "I don't think there's any question that MDMA has the ability to damage certain brain cells," Hanson says. "It really boils down to a benefit-risk analysis. Are you willing to expose yourself to the possibility of brain damage or even death for recreation? All these things seem like a fairly high price to pay so you can have a good time on a Friday night."Danielle Heird, a restaurant hostess at a Las Vegas casino who died July 20, 2000, may have been one of those people who is extremely sensitive to Ecstasy. Gary Telgenhoff, the deputy medical examiner in Clark County, Nev., who performed the autopsy on Heird, says she took a small amount.At a club with friends, Heird took Ecstasy and complained of feeling ill and having trouble walking, her father says. Her friends took her to her boyfriend's apartment so she could lie down, he says."They went back out to continue partying," Jim Heird says. She died before they came back. Source: USA Today (US)Author: Donna Leinwand, USA Today Published: February 11, 2002Copyright: 2002 USA Today a division of Gannett Co. Inc.Contact: editor usatoday.comWebsite: http://www.usatoday.com/Related Articles:Ecstasy Grows As Danger To Teens http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11974.shtmlSentencing Guidelines Toughened for Ecstasy http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9087.shtmlU.S. Panel Weighs Tougher Penalties for Ecstasyhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9073.shtml
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Comment #17 posted by FoM on February 11, 2002 at 22:15:48 PT
When does it all begin
Reading your post goneposthole I remember something that happened to me when I was only a couple years old. We came home in the car from somewhere and it was parked in the driveway and my parents and I got out of the car. They started walking towards the house and I turned and walked back and started sniffing the fumes from the tailpipe. I got really chastised for that and I barely remember it. When your young you are always looking for ways to alter your consciousness. I never got into inhalants. I remember those fumes made me feel a little sick. Cured me! LOL!
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Comment #16 posted by goneposthole on February 11, 2002 at 21:23:50 PT
something
Ever since the age of ten I knew of glue sniffing. I didn't go out and buy tubes of glue to sniff, anybody with a lick of sense knew glue sniffing was not a healthy sport.Some folks inevitably got a tube of glue and sniffed away. I cannot help it if they did so, it was a choice they made on their own. What are we going to do? Remove all glue stocks, so glue can't be sniffed?Then a switch to paint will be made, all done to get rockin' stoned. I can't help it.In Canada today, Inuit teenagers sniff gasoline to get stoned. I cannot help it, they're doing it.How can it be stopped? It cannot. Period.Substance abuse still continues unabated no matter how much enforcement. I really wish those who choose to sniff glue, paint or gasoline along with ecstasy would stop. They won't, for some ungodly reason they want to do it. Call it peer pressure, something. Who knows?So what do we do? Stop selling gasoline, paint, and glue, too?Problems abound with substance abuse, name them all save cannabis (it's an herb); to solve those problems requires patience, tolerance, heads, hearts, and a little of a lot of love. None of which the government cares to employ. I cannot help that either, even though I think that I have tried, the government is a hopeless case.
It cannot be helped and they need the most help of all. They are 'the' problem.Cannabis will help them all, given the chance. Legalize it, and make it available. It provides more than hope, a glimpse of sanity will cut through the 'London fog'. 
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Comment #15 posted by DdC on February 11, 2002 at 18:59:49 PT
When X Was MDA, now did that law stop a thing?
MDA was outlawed, change the recipe a thousand times get the highs requiring a new law with each manipulation? Could less hazardous $400.00 ounces be out of reach that $10 quick esteem builders in a pill bottle and pseudo-love and acceptance filling voids that start at home, and are not dealt with, so blame it on whatever's present. Burn some Beatle records, ganja books or tell a few more lies and stories. Preach its sin or breed the snitches raising next years DEAth budget showing politico's the rise in arrest statistics. Scare the masses out of telling of their ingestion then show these recent poll stats to GOPer warlords that their WoD must be working Fauxnews say use was down with Banndet/Walters, and don't say not as many reported. Amazing how ganja use rose in emergency rooms at the same time they began tracking ganja use in emergency rooms. Before they ask no one told but that doesn't stop Drug Czar lies from being told. If ganja was used thousands of years how did it lead to what wasn't invented? If its not medicine why do they roll it and send it to 7 people and could they do it for 7 million patients? Yes. Whats the point of the Food and Drug Administration if the vested interest copshops have power to over rule them? Not prudent at this juncture, raising the debt with war protecting pipelines and wealthy tax refunds that never trickle down, is only foolish if you don't have stock in the banks covering the spending, collecting $200 billion a year back in interest, and its your money your spending. Or selling food to the prisoners you're importing as governor its called intitlement, if your a Bushit that is.All NIDA negative theories replacing cannabis science, keeps this war perpetuating profits of the few korpses on top, giving us drugs on our crops or drug stores on every block, drug preservatives and enhancers and phoney drug flavors and colors of chemicals and tastes and textures in all sorts of over packaged fast food. Obese malnutritioned and heart stopping cholestriol beef all do a good job raising the GNP. Same as WoD. While on the violetly mean bully pulpit they preach spreading AIDs sharing needles is morally acceptable and caging 90 years for cultivation in fossil fuel states ain't to be questioned. These gawd fearing sheople need the 20,000 overdoses from inconsistant street dope dosages and schwagg spiked with more corporate drugs to blame the pot on, bringing more stats and funds for terrorist instantly gone by ending this fraud WoD.1.2 million in prison on drug offenses must be good law enforcement of very bad laws and success isn't doing a good job today, it is profits on misery funding terrorist' politico agenda's, using cannabis alternatives like OPEC, Alaska and Colombian crude oil. X is a white powder drug available because it has a market. Replacing the X with forced ritilan or jail to get raped as a deterrent or Bushit religious drug treatment are the sos just a little different. Don't have kids if you can't handle them. Keep your laws off my body in the name of protecting them! Removing more Liberty from all won't protect kids from the neglect the kids get and try filling it with X Instead of dealing with why the profits are so high inticing kids to the market. Is X more dangerous than a kid with a pocket full of money selling cannabis he swapped or stole from some naive dying medicinal user? We are taught how to succeed in a capital driven society, not common sense or ethics outdated by the bottom line subliminally blasted daily in waves all pounding Bushit propaganda's ends justifying means zero tolerance...TV programming, enuff said. All white powders are man's adulterants. Legal or not doesn't much matter, legal chemical tobacco waste more lives than the hallocaust, still lied in comparison too organic ganja, or lies of ganja leading to anti-motivation, or lies to protect their vested ignorance selling us chemicals we don't use with the natural cannabis alternatives. Preventing disease doesn't profit like treating it and peace doesn't sell Sikorsky helichoppers to spy on ganja growers or get retired cops farm forfeitures or do what all racist fascism has done, suppress the minorites and keep the labor in division and from organizing. Elect CEO's and CIA lawyers to legislate profits for themselves. Or start wars protecting resources of crude well exploiters. Peace might prove profitable to Pharmacies but why spend $millions on research that could replace half of the over the counter meds killing 100,000 a year or 1/3 of the behind the counter "drugs" sold by the Partnerships, laundered by the Philanthrapist Drugczar Pisstester Chemist Walters. Booze produced Reefer Madness cause people found it more relaxing than bud in a bottle that has high tax revenue and is legally killing more 18-24 tr old kids than cancer. Puritans came after the Pilgrims, I think its time we re-remember that.Peace won't bring bucks to Monsanto or Ashcroft spraying midwest pheasants or Colombian peasants. Or the crude oil pesticides and herbicides used in Frankenfoods or growing grain taking 12# of it for every pound of Micky D now sold globally all competing with the most balanced nutrition on the planet, being made as illegal, classed the same as LSD, whats fed the song birds throughout time and made gruel, staving off famine before as it could again. Hempseed plastic or hemp stalk fiber all a threat to the cotton poisoners profits. Please don't feed red herrings, they bite. X should not be used in my humble opinion. Let the doctors deal with it instead of cops and prisons. And free the parents to care for their kids instead of three jobs barly making it. Raise the wages to fit the cost of living, open doors to education not legislation blocking admission and educate truth and common sense and free the plant that could provide a soverign, healthy way of life.
Peace, Love and Liberty
DdCProhibitionist Deceptions
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionprohibitionistwodjunkies.showMessage?topicID=43.topicThe assassins of youth...DARE the FRCn Chemical Partnerships
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionwhyitstimetolegalize.showMessage?topicID=105.topicAssassins of Youth
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/36/36796.gif
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Comment #14 posted by Sam Adams on February 11, 2002 at 17:13:58 PT
I love the alarmist tone
Where have these people been for the last 15 years? The horse is out of the barn - WAY out of the barn. Teenage use of ecstasy could DOUBLE from what it is now? I don't see how that's possible - are they going to start using them for poker chips? The stuff is everywhere!I mean, in all seriousness, when I went to college in the 80's, "X" was the trendy drug around campus - that was a LONG time ago! These propaganda people aren't speaking to the teens, they're just pandering to their extremist right-wing friends. The teens can just look at their friends who do various drugs if they want to see the effects.
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Comment #13 posted by Robbie on February 11, 2002 at 16:10:08 PT
mayan
How bout Partnership for a Partnership for a Drug-Free America Free America or PPDFAFA. Well, it's an idea.Also, having done X three three times, I think that people should just chill...know what I'm sayin'?
Who's UNDER wear is UNDER there?
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Comment #12 posted by FoM on February 11, 2002 at 16:05:15 PT
Bad Dope - ABC Nightline Monday, Feb. 11th
I haven't found an article so far but this might be an interesting program.
Police in Dallas were finally gaining ground in the war on drugs, racking up some record drug busts and higher arrest numbers. There was just one problem, the drugs weren't real, and some innocent people were held without cause — a drug bust, without the drugs, but not short on the bust. 
http://abcnews.go.com/Sections/Nightline/
 'Sheetrock Scandal' Hits Dallas Police 
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11795.shtml
Fake Drugs Force an End To 24 Cases in Dallas 
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11771.shtml 
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Comment #11 posted by Jose Melendez on February 11, 2002 at 15:29:30 PT:
Arrest Prohibition
If they would only substitute the word "alcohol" for the word "ecstasy" they would have instant credibility. As it stands, this girl probably died because MARIJUANA IS ILLEGAL!
Think about it: small pills that don't make you reek but do get you high are just the thing that cannabis prohibition would logically increase the demand for... I know, bad grammar, but TRUTH!
Kids DIE from alcohol every year, yet the Partnership (funded by alcohol and pharmaceutical companies -really!) refuses to "dilute the message" about illicit drugs. 
ONDCP strenuously resisted including alcohol in their anti-drug ads until Congress conveniently passed laws prohibiting the agency from doing so.
think about that for a moment...

 Of course, Mothers Against Drunk Driving was concerned for a while, but we don't hear anything from them anymore, anyway, any more than we hear from the Bowers family, who lost their child because we insist on circumventing international law to shoot down supposed traffickers of "some" drugs.
The alcohol, caffeine and the prohibition industries bought air time at this year's Superbowl, because no one will just say NO!
Arrest Prohibition - Drug War is TREASON
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Comment #10 posted by null on February 11, 2002 at 15:23:07 PT
nice quote Unknown Pleasures
How can we have freedom of speech and thought, without the freedom of experience???That is a fantastic quote U.P.! It set of all kinds of blinky lights and alarms in my mind. I think it sums up one of the most insidious motives behind the whole War on Some Drugs:  control - government over the people, against the people and in spite of the people. I'm going to print out your quote and stick it on my computer monitor!
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Comment #9 posted by mayan on February 11, 2002 at 14:47:58 PT
No Credibility...
The PDFA has no credibility & these ads will be laughed at just like the Super Bowl ads. If they wouldn't have lied to us for years we might be inclined to take them seriously. I wish there was a Partnership for Free-Drugs in America!
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Comment #8 posted by unknown pleasures on February 11, 2002 at 14:35:30 PT:
Prison is a far greater risk to your health than E
Sick, sick propaganda stuff.
Extacy is an epidemic? What about greasy, artery clogging junk food? Fast food is definately bad for you, it's been liked to countless diseases, obesity, stroke, you name it. But yet, somehow, Mcdonalds is a sponsor in the Olympics. 
THE OLYMPICS! Like you could win a medal on a steady diet of burgers and cola. How many heart attacks, strokes, diabetics has this industry produced?....and it's very, very legal.Things that are 'bad for us' are advertised over and over again as an integral part of our culture. Why must I face prison for taking a pill, yet be patted on the back for inching closer and closer to heart failure by chomping down All-American burgers?If I took E only once, the effects on my health would be neglegable, yet I could easily be dragged off by a squad of stormtroopers. However, if I ate junk food 4 times a day for years and years, dying as a sick, fat blob of a man... that's my constitutional right!I have tried Extacy. It was a very enjoyable experience, and yes, it was probably 'bad' for me. But as an independent citizen, I made a CHOICE. I weighed the risks, I DECIDED to find out for myself. 
If I can CHOOSE to poison my body with tabacco and fast food until I die of them, Why can I not CHOOSE to experiment with my very own brain!?How can we have freedom of speech and thought, without the freedom of experience???
 
it's a sad, sad country.
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Comment #7 posted by bcg on February 11, 2002 at 14:06:53 PT
Ex and serotonin
I had been asking about the "markers of neuropathy" that various researchers in my field had been describing for some time (I am MERCIFULLY close to getting my Ph.D. for my dissertation on the psychopharmacology of cocaine reinforcement). I do dispute that, if lesioned, the cells E targets will regrow as E_Johnson contends. However, at a recent meeting of psychopharmacologists, several researchers presented data that those "markers" dissipate over time. I think what it all means is that the nerve junctions (synapses) are reordered after E (whether that is good or bad and how much reordering is too much is debatable). But the major finding is that NIDA funded studies are generating data that are contrary to the party line that E causes irreversible brain cell death. 
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Comment #6 posted by E_Johnson on February 11, 2002 at 13:48:12 PT
This is actually now known to be wrong
 Nerve cells in the brain don't grow back."This was believed to be true for a very long time, but in the last few years, it has been discovered that people do grow new brain cells, you are't stuck for life with just what you get in the womb.It also turns out NOT to be true that alcohol destroys brain cells. Old drunks have the same number of brain cells as old sober people. That was the conclusion of a study published a few years ago.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on February 11, 2002 at 13:39:57 PT
It's a war on drugs that are fun
When I think of the different illegal drugs I've experimented with in the 70s I have good memories of those I can remember. LOL! I don't remember it being hard to stop doing them except amphetamines which I just loved. 
As I got older I had a few bad injuries and major surgeries and I got to taking pain medicine. I don't remember them making me feel happy or anything but quitting them was horrible and they were legal prescription drugs. Quilting illegal drugs was a piece of cake compared to the legal ones.
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Comment #4 posted by TroutMask on February 11, 2002 at 13:32:27 PT
Facts are Flexible!
Oh, it's really very simple. If we question whether the War on Some Drugs is effective, then drug use is levelling off or going down. If we question whether we need more money for the War on Some Drugs, then drug use is going up. See!?!? Easy as pi!-TM
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Comment #3 posted by Jose Melendez on February 11, 2002 at 12:39:16 PT:
here is the source link
The source link for comment #2 is from slate.com, titled: The Bad News Bombers
By Eric Umansky
Posted Monday, February 11, 2002, at 1:32 AM PT
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Comment #2 posted by Jose Melendez on February 11, 2002 at 12:27:51 PT:
Drug War: "Where's theTruth?"
Check out this straight-shooting take on this from:USA Today leads with an unconvincing report headlined: ECSTASY GROWS AS DANGER TO TEENS. 
According to the first sentence in USAT's piece, "The number of teenagers using the club drug Ecstasy could double in five years and is rising at such an alarming rate that leading anti-drug advocates will launch a campaign against it today." 
Never mind that a campaign by anti-drug advocates is not exactly rock-solid proof of an E-epidemic. The evidence for that supposed trend is a report, whose age the paper leaves unclear, from the advocates mentioned above. 
Moreover, the article's last paragraph contradicts the thesis that Ecstasy use is skyrocketing: "John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, notes that one recent study on Ecstasy use suggested that it could be leveling off." 
Walters and Bush have an opportunity to cut fraud and waste in government; shutter the ONDCP, or reassign it to include alcohol and cigarettes.
Arrest Prohibition - Drug War is TREASON!
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Comment #1 posted by p4me on February 11, 2002 at 11:51:04 PT
It all defies reason
The tag lines at the end of each ad read, "Ecstasy: Where's the love?"That is what the MJ law reform community has said all along. Even more than that, where is the commpassion Busch talked about in the elections. Of course that leads to where is the pragmatism? Where is our freedom? Why does our government continue to lie about the medical benefits of marijuana. It all defies reason. We are not addressing the serious problem this country has with alcohol. Why doesn't the Partnership For a Drug-Free America call for health warning labels on all alcohol commercials. Because PFADFA is the propaganda arm of the alcohol and pill companies. It would all be easier if the government were honest with everyone and the Surgeon General had credibality and actually did something. They push Ritalin to school children and have soft drink contracts with the schools. There should be a warning label on soft drinks telling of the addictive nature of caffiene and mention that death due to obesity is now the number 4 killer in America. Sixty-Minutes did a piece on childhood diabietes and all last night.Marijuana is the ideal recreational drug and that will be a hard thing to change. If the alcoholics would take up smoking MJ things would be a lot better in this country. We will all see what happens when the coffeehouses spread across the UK. I would not mess with estcasy myself. Because the Federal Government has built a standing army to raid and seize property and execute citizens and shoot them, it makes the people feel like their is a war against us. And the lies tell us that facts and reason are not important and the aristocracy rules. If in doubt, votem out.
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