PR History of the War on Drugs by Sadie Kiefer

Since before time began, we have had governments stepping in to do what is necessary to keep everyone safe, but with added information, we have discovered that what was then, “Reefer Madness,” is now something people are using daily in their lives. The PR campaign behind the war on drugs can be very misleading and throughout this research, I will go over how the campaign was used to target minorities and especially people of color.  

 

Since the 1960’s there has been a so-called “war on drugs” that brings to light the misleading information, we’ve been told over the years. Something that had little research and evidence that marijuana makes you do crazy things, such as, said during this time, jumping out of buildings and committing suicide. Now we all know that this campaign had its’ flaws, but targeting minorities, to scare future generations is a scare tactic that provides that you have an audience who, when willing to head advice, may become invoked with fear, therefore abstaining from whatever it is that you are trying to forbid. To emphasize the importance of this scare tactic, we will go over how the RACE acronym we learned in class, regulates this campaign and the planning aspect of said campaign. RACE, meaning research, action-planning, creating the communication, and evaluating the campaign, is meant to act as a template for any PR campaign. In this instance (the war on drugs), had a tactic to create similar reactions within the African American community, and further hold anyone accountable for doing drugs, by serving huge sentences and other massive repercussions. 

The campaign first started with the overall outlook of private prisons and what they stood for. Private prisons benefit widely from those incarcerated. Just think about how private prisons and taxes work. We pay taxes mostly for a lot of things, but in this case, we will note the taxes taken out to hold someone in a private institution, such as jail. Since the era of marijuana, and its’ rise to what we now call medicinal marijuana (which is legal) the PR campaign aimed to create similar laws to Jim Crow that disproportionally targeted people of color. How were they able to get away with it? I will tell you. It was the 1960s when segregation was still an issue, not to mention racist cops, teachers, lawyers, and the list goes on. With the help of campaign public relations officials though, the campaign was able to call out the African American community specifically, in terms of holding them in jails for obscene amounts of time for petty crimes, such as being caught with marijuana on their person. A in the RACE acronym, calls out the way in which this PR campaign planned to provide repercussions to all drug users. As of 2001, about 1 in 3 African Americans, were “under the thumb of the criminal justice system,” says Graham Boyd (Boyd, Graham). 

The C in the RACE acronym, represented here in this PR campaign, shows that President Reagan used scare tactics to prevent anyone from using drugs. Throughout the campaign, you can see some subtle and some downright obvious, that drugs were something to make you lose your mind. However, recent studies how those drugs, such as mushrooms, better named “shrooms,” provide a gateway to overall better mental health and cures for things, according to a Netflix documentary on shrooms, like cancer (Schwartzberg, Louis). Before the making of this film, I can only hope that the slogan behind this movie was to bring to light SWOT Analysis. These, by definition, are the factors that drive a campaign and determine the strategies used, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In the case of this campaign to create an opportunity to learn, via the Netflix film, Fantastic Fungi, the audience is swept up by this latest information, which the campaign strongly uses as an excellent communication channel for viewers to watch at their leisure. Determining how you are going to get information out to the public is critical, you want the audience to be the ones you are targeting and in turn, others might be recommended by those initial viewers, to watch the film. I am unsure of the budget for this film, but can say the planning calendar and budget for this film and campaign, have matched that of the film Assassin of Youth (a late 1930’s film portraying the effects of marijuana usage). This film was successful at the time, due to the trust viewers gave to the production company and in turn the President, at the time. How the war on drugs campaign evaluated the benchmark of their progress, was by the amount of incarcerated due to everyday human beings’ drug use. By using the amount of people incarcerated during the war on drugs campaign, we can see that the benchmark was met. Meaning, that plenty of people were arrested and put on trial (most convicted guilty) with little hope of seeing justice or freedom for the regrettable actions they had taken during this time, which was to use drugs without government consent. The conclusion from these benchmarks, and even more drug use that occurred, created a sense of urgency or crisis. To combat this crisis, propaganda came out all over the US, claiming that drugs will make you commit suicide. And further, make you lose your mind. With today’s controversy, we can easily see that drugs do quite the opposite. Yes, they induce a euphoric state of mind, but they also help cure things like mental illness, and even cancer. Under the right supervision, when taking the psychedelic drug, shrooms, you can see the ways in which the Netflix documentary combats previous misconceptions about drugs. One of the main characters in the show, even states that shrooms, create a feeling of togetherness and community (when taken in the right setting, with the right people). In the future sense of the word, repercussions, we can see that those who were incarcerated at this time, were part of the campaign, being that they were inducted into the misconceptions of society, but most importantly, the Presidents of the time. Public relations should be about campaigning the truth and further investigating that truth until you reach a specific target audience. In the case of the war on drugs campaign, a lot of the incarcerated were treated poorly, and unfortunately, were part of a benchmark conclusion that showed most drug users were African American. However, the campaign to end things like cancer is majorly brought to light in the form of something that used to be forbidden. Which is, you guessed it, drugs! 

 

Work Cited 

1. Boyd, Graham. “The Drug War Is the New Jim Crow.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, July 2001, https://www.aclu.org/other/drug-war-new-jim-crow. 

2. Schwartzberg, Louis. Fantastic Fungi. Netflix, Netflix, 11 Oct. 2019, https://www.netflix.com/title/81183477. Accessed 8 Dec. 2021.