This Is Your Brain on Drugs

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This article is about the campaign. For the episode of The Riches, see This Is Your Brain On Drugs (The Riches).

This Is Your Brain on Drugs was a large-scale US anti-narcotics campaign by Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) launched in 1987, that used two televised public service announcements (PSAs) and a related poster campaign.[1]

Contents

[edit] 1987 version

The first PSA, from 1987, showed a man who held up an egg and said, "This is your brain," before picking up a frying pan and adding, "This is drugs." He then cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, "This is your brain on drugs." Finally he looks up at the camera and asks, "Any questions?" A shorter version of this, simply showing a close-up of an egg dropping into a frying pan, was used a few years later. [2]

[edit] 1998 version

The second PSA, from 1998, featured actress Rachael Leigh Cook, who, as before, holds up an egg and says, "this is your brain", before lifting up a frying pan with the words, "this is heroin", after which she places the egg on a kitchen counter - "this is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin" - and slams the pan down on it. She lifts the pan back up, saying, "and this is what your body goes through", in reference to the remnants of the egg now dripping from the bottom of the pan and down her arm. She then says, "It's not over yet" and proceeds to smash everything in the kitchen with the frying pan, each time saying, "and this is what your family goes through", "and your friends", et cetera. She finally drops the pan on the counter of the now-wrecked kitchen, and says, "Any questions?"[3]

[edit] Impact

TV Guide went on to name it as one of the top one hundred television advertisements ever.[4] Cult Internet comedian Nostalgia Critic poked fun at both advertisements in his Top 11 Nostalgic Drug PSAs video. In response to the girl destroying the kitchen, he answers the question by asking one of his own: "Yea; what the hell kind of drugs are you on?!"

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ "PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS". The Museum of Broadcast Communications online archive. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/publicservic/publicservic.htm. 
  2. ^ "The Partnerships "Fried Egg" TV Message". Drugfree.org press release. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America. October 24, 2006. doi:August 13, 2007. http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/About/NewsReleases/Fried_Egg_Message. 
  3. ^ "The Partnership's Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Creation of Campaign Advertisements" (press release). National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. January 24, 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20060114023517/http://www.mediacampaign.org/newsletter/spring98/update-04.html. 
  4. ^ CNN report on the commercial
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