When I was 16, I first watched the movie “Reefer Madness”. Reefer Madness is a movie of propaganda that was released in 1936 to show the then presumed effects of marijuana use in teenagers. The movie portrays marijuana as a dangerous drug that will eventually lead to a life of crime and will ultimately cause the user to become insane. The movie depicted that use of marijuana will lead to rape, suicide, murder, delusions, and an onslaught of other terrifying outcomes. When I first watched the movie, I was told that it was satire and not to be taken seriously. Honestly, I thought that the movie was hilarious. The predicaments that the teenagers would get themselves in because of marijuana use were so farfetched, I thought that the movie was an off-color comedy. After watching the the film, I was told that Reefer Madness was supposed to be taken seriously in that time-period and that people truly thought that marijuana use would lead to these events. During that time, there was little to no education about marijuana and its effects. There was also a racial stigma attached to marijuana (it was often referred to as the “Mexican drug”). Although the purpose of the movie is no longer relevant due to the progression of research about marijuana, those who financed and gave the green light to produce this film were attempting to utilize the fear appeal to try to reach teenagers about the risks of marijuana use.
The use of fear appeal, like the method in Reefer Madness, has been used in anti-drug campaigns for decades. I remember watching television in the 1990’s (which seemed to be a big time for anti-drug commercials) and seeing the “This is your brain; this is your brain on drugs” and all of its variations. There was another set of commercials that included a girl who had melted into her couch because of marijuana use. Oddly enough, a few years later, I wound up meeting that same girl from the commercial. She was excelling in college and a proud marijuana user and advocate. It is interesting how those circumstances work out sometimes. My school participated in the “D.A.R.E” campaign and the “Just say no to drugs” slogan. But are any of these fear appeal based campaigns and gimmicks truly successful?
Studies that have been conducted to test the success rates of the use of fear appeal have been mixed (Gruman, 2016). While early studies show promising success of use of the fear appeal, later studies found that placing too much fear into an individual could have adverse effects from what the campaign is attempting to accomplish (Gruman, 2016). It has also been found that the fear appeal may have more influence on what an individual would like to do rather than what they are going to do (Gruman, 2016). For example, someone who uses drugs may see an anti-drug ad campaign and would like to do something about their drug use, but that is as far as their thought process goes. There is no action taken to deal with their drug use, only thoughts. Although the fear appeal has had greater results than informational appeal, there are still problems with that route that need to be addressed and reworked into a more successful program (Gruman, 2016).
Myself, I always thought that anti-drug campaigns (those regarding marijuana) were too dramatic. Where I was from, I knew plenty of successful adults who used marijuana daily and did not have “scrambled egg” brains or could not get off their couches because of marijuana use. They may have become something similar if they had been using heroin or crack-cocaine, but never the “potheads”. Because of my experience with marijuana users and with marijuana later in life, I believe that I was right to think of these campaigns as dramatic. Fortunately, these fear appeal based anti-drug campaigns have moved further away from putting marijuana in the spotlight and have moved more towards drugs that have the potential to be lethal. With the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana in some states, research on the plant and its benefits and consequences will become more prominent and experts can leave the campaigns that use fear appeal for the real drugs. I find it remarkable how these fear appeal approaches got many people to think that marijuana was a dangerous drug.
To this day, I still love watching Reefer Madness. I watch it a few times a year, and it still astonishes me to think that it was supposed to be factual. My, how times have changed.
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. ProQuest Ebook Central. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com. Accessed on 2/15/2021.