montana meth project

This series of anti-crystal meth ads from Montana really hit home. The dichotomy between what is being said and what is being watched is really effective. Crystal meth is one of the most harmful drugs out there and is seriously ruining the lives of some young people out there. This campaign is hopefully going toward stopping some of that harm. My only real worry is that this ad is preaching to the converted. It seems that possibly this set of ads is talking to parents and kids to show them how badly drugs can mess up their lives, it is not actually talking to the kids who are currently using. However, if the message reaches just a few of those kids who may be tempted then it is a success.

try drugs

This educational site about the dangers of drug use is very clever. Titled 'try drugs' the site is split into three areas exploring marijuana, cocaine and heroin effects. But the way the site works is to present you with a seemingly static page featuring an animation, some copy and a piece of music but turn things on their head by hijacking the controls. So for the marijuana section your cursor is sluggish and the copy blurred (until you rollover it) and at the end a pop-up warning window appears from the Norwegian crime unit saying that illegal activity has occurred with your IP address and country. For the cocaine section the cursor is hyper and over responsive and keeps taking lines of coke making the screen flash brightly with an email pop-up window saying that illegal activity has been spotted on this machine and the email getting sent to the authorities (although not for real obviously). And finally the heroin section is surreal with the copy exploding inwards and being generally illegible and lots of pop-up internet pages dealing with death and bankrupcy appearing. It is a clever way to highlight the effects of drugs on the user as for those who have never tried the drug you can get a feeling of what it is like to be on them.

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