More substance to beat substance abuse: Anti-drug campaigns may inadvertently glamorise drugs, experts warn

If history teaches us anything, it is that anti-drug campaigns often polish the very thing they seek to tarnish. Trying to chasten youth into sobriety is the right thing to do. But the unintended consequence is that they often glamourise drugs and the 'bad boy' lifestyle such campaigns condemn.

Whether it's films that highlight the terrible consequences of narcotics like the 2016 film, Udta Punjab, or 'anti-drugs' songs like the 1986 'Pack That Smack' by Remo Fernandes, the image of transgression becomes the unintended appeal. A slogan like 'Just Say No' or 'Choose Life' - the latter a famous anti-drug activism slogan in 80s Britain that was subverted in the 90s film Trainspotting - became less a deterrent than a badge of irony worn by youngsters eager to prove their independence.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is right to highlight India's drug menace. Punjab alone offers a grim illustration as a hunting ground for heroin ('chitta') smuggled across the Pakistani border. Villages reel under addiction, families disintegrate and crime flourishes. But campaigns like 'Yudh Nasheyan Virudh' have been more theatre than cure, while collusion between traffickers and enforcement agencies continues to erode credibility.

The US' 'War on Drugs' is a global cautionary tale. Launched with Richard Nixon's rhetoric in the 70s and fuelled by Ronald Reagan's zeal in the 80s, it substituted punishment for treatment, swelling prisons while leaving communities hollowed out. Cocaine and heroin were demonised, yet opioids were overprescribed with abandon. The result was not eradication but adaptation: traffickers shifted routes, and addicts shifted substances.

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What, then, is the alternative? Less theatre, more, well, substance. Invest in education that treats young people as rational actors. Replace scare tactics with mentorship and community spaces. Tackle structural despair - unemployment, alienation, corruption - that makes intoxication seductive. Otherwise, the next anti-drug slogan will be just another advert for the very thing it seeks to banish.