The message is that when you're on drugs, anyone looking at you can tell, because drugs make your eyes look funny. So if you're driving while under the influence, the police will know. By looking at your eyes. So, don't.
This is not true. It's obviously not true. Anyone who's ever seen someone on drugs will know that they don't cause your eyes to become the size of golfballs - the advert uses image morphing to make the eyes enormous, as explained in the Making Of clip:
Some drugs do have subtle effects on the eyes, such as pupil dilation, but you can only spot this if you're staring someone right in the face from about six inches away. Not to mention that anyone who's used a car will know that drivers don't spend their time examining the eyes of their fellow road users.
There's one very good reason why you shouldn't drive on drugs, which is that you might crash and kill yourself or someone else. Why the Department of Transport didn't use this as the basis of their advert, only they know. As it is, they've ended up with something that absolutely no-one is going to take seriously - see the YouTube comments. When YouTubers are making incisive criticisms of your campaign, you know you're doing something wrong.
[BPSDB]
13 comments:
It is their instinct to lie. A better grade of politician tried hard to mislead without actually lying, but this lot just resort straight to the porkie.
What an appalling advert. It's going to have the opposite effect to that intended because people who take drugs are laughing about it and reassuring each other that they drive better on drugs.
The advert that shows the effect of hitting someone at 35mph and at 30mph is much more effective. It gives you a reason to obey the limit. If they'd said "speeding gives you bug eyes" it wouldn't have worked nearly as well.
Right. Drink-driving adverts are in general very good - the one where some guys are drinking a bar looking at a girl and suddenly she gets smashed against the wall stuck in my mind as well.
Which is why it's so baffling that they went for the "Eyes" option...
From the making of video... "Confront a huge amount of confusion that surrounds the issue"
LOL. So what's this new drug that causes bug eyes? I'm confused! Is it Cake? Nasty stuff that Cake.
The Horrors of Cake
A mischievous part of me thinks they're thinking...we're aiming this at drug users, they've probably just had a spliff so they'll be feeling a bit paranoid, so let's work with that. ;)
Actually, I'm sure somewhere in Britain there is a poor stoner staring at the mirror thinking - "Are they getting bigger?"
The New England Journal of Medicine once ran a Letter to the Editor in which there was a confident statement that looked wrong, something to effect that LSD destroys serotoninergic neurons in small doses. There was a citation to a reputable journal, but when I looked up the paper, it wasn't even on that topic. IOW, someone with a professional degree had lied and the NEJM hadn't bothered to do a rudimentary literature check, or had gone along with the lie because it was for a "good" cause. I can't see any excuse for deliberately polluting the medical literature, so I hope something bad happens to the perps.
I'm very anti-(illegal)drug, but that's just stupid. I mean, come on!
Lying about it like that just invalidates all true risks in a lot of people's minds.
On a unrelated note, I haven't seen eyes like that since someone said "Who wants free pizza?" on my University campus. Stampeding ensued.
Roger Bigod - To be fair, the author might have just made a mistake - it happens - but that's such a bold claim that the journal should have checked the reference.
A peer reviewer probably would have but letters to the editor often don't get rigorously reviewed. But then they are cited as if they were real articles...
Here's my theory, based on exactly no evidence:
* The ad agency was offered huge amounts of money by the government to make an advert to scare young people off drugs.
* Being real people, and therefore with experience with drugs, they knew all the usual dire warnings were bullshit.
* So the decided to take the piss out of their employers by making an incredibly silly anti-drug film, which no real person would ever take seriously, just to see if the employers noticed.
* They didn't.
Ha. I think they really do believe it though because in the YouTube comments they are attempting to defend it. And losing.
The British Government is losing a flamewar on YouTube, welcome to the 21st century.
This made me laugh so hard. I love your irony, Neuroskeptic.
Don't thank me. Thank the people who made this advert. They made it so easy...
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