Episode 25: This Is Your Brain on Drugs

The fried-egg ad that defined the War on Drugs was built by a marketing firm, not a doctor, and the science behind it was thinner than the slogan. Any questions? This episode traces "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" back to 1985, when a group of Madison Avenue executives decided the government's anti-drug ads just needed better marketing.

We look at how they talked CBS, NBC, and ABC into handing over more than two billion dollars in free airtime, and the uncomfortable fact that some of the biggest checks funding the campaign came from tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical companies. I break down the actual psychology behind the fifteen-second spot, the fear-without-efficacy formula researcher Kim Witte identified years before the ad even aired, and a 2009 meta-analysis on the D.A.R.E. program that found the whole approach barely moved the needle.

Then it gets personal, growing up under a different set of unquestioned rules, and giving a D.A.R.E. speech in sixth grade with my whole chest.