Ad Campaign

There is a new ad campaign spread across billboards telling us to speak to our kids before they start drinking. There is a picture of cute child of age five or so.

Who are these morons producing these ads?

What parent wants their child to involve him or herself in underage drinking? Or to overly imbibe even when of the "proper" age?

I remember telling the kids, "You can only take medicine from a doctor or a nurse and lucky for you, your mom is a nurse." And both of my kids at least tried street drugs. One of them tried more than the other. Neither got their drugs from a doctor or a nurse.

As the child of an alcoholic, I was more than passingly aware of the dangers of drinking. Even age drinking and certainly underage drinking. And yet – I was at the courthouse with the kid who was ticketed for underage drinking. He paid an $80 fine. There was some other punishment, too, but we never were told how that would work and so it rather disappeared.

I told 'em and I told 'em and yet they drank and experimented with drugs. What sort of message is this new ad campaign? Like parents don't exhort their children to behave and that is the only reason the kids fall off the straight and narrow path? Where is the admission that peer pressure is intense during the teen years and lead to all sorts of behaviors that parents aren't too keen on. That was even an issue when I was the teen.

Explain the dangers of drink, drugs, sex, and dangerous driving habits and miraculously all these things will disappear – the ads seem to say.

Me? I want to know who designed this ad campaign and how much money was spent on it. Because it was surely wasted money. The parents who care are already doing that and will be properly ignored when the time comes. The parents who don't care will not be persuaded by a billboard and their kids have far more problems to worry about anyway.

Great waste of money. And irritating, too.