Here’s a list of the ten anti-drug commercials we just couldn’t help but laugh at (more than usual)
10. Try Football
I know people usually smoke pot to demonstratively impress chicks, thinking that it is like a “surfing board” or some “sweet new wheels”, but it is not either of those things! Why don’t these pot smokers just do an equivalent activity instead, like football?
9. Drugs Finance Terrorism
Could they have possibly come up with a more exploitative commercial in the year following September 11th? Maybe if the tagline were, “You know that Pat Tillman got run over by a terrorist’s drug-financed Lexus, right?”
8. Pot Burns Your Car and Guitar
I understand the part about getting high and thinking you’re some seminal musician and artistically burning your guitar, but how does pot make you lose your car?? Is this guy really buying so many dime bags, it’s keeping him from buying that $25,000 Trans Am?
7. Diving Into An Empty Swimming Pool
Is there a faster way to get your overly-cynical teenage audience to tune out faster than to open your commercial with the phrase “everyone seems to be having one dandy ol’ time”? It was frickin’ 1989 — at least refer to drugs as “bodacious” or “dudical” or something.
6. Baby Playing With Pills
A Thirteen-Year-Old somewhere in America right now: “Hmmm… a bottle of pills… I seem to remember playing with this and dancing to an electric guitar riff when I was nine months old. I think I’m going to use them to excess now, because I remember that memory.”
5. Pee-Wee Herman Talks About Crack
Everything that Pee-Wee Herman says in this commercial is pretty rational and straightforward, but there’s still something just… off… about it. Could it be that a goofy-voiced, red-bowtie-wearing owner of a magical cartoon house is talking about crack? Ehhh, maybe
4. This Is Your Brain On Drugs
Bill Hicks pretty much sums up this unforgettable 80s ad campaign: “I have had seven balls of light come off of a UFO, lead me onto their ship, explain to me telepathically that we are all one and there is no such thing as death, but I have NEVER looked at an egg and thought it was a f*ckin’ brain. Now — maybe I’m not getting good sh*t….
3. Talking Dog
How is this in any way an ad against marijuana? “Hey, I know this stuff may allow you to have a conversation with your f*cking dog, but you shouldn’t take it cause it’s a little bad for your lungs, plus your dog’s probably a total buzzkill.”
2. I Learned It By Watching You, Dad!
Looking back on this catchphrase-spawning gem, I just can’t get over how cluelessly 80s Cop Dad sets up his son for the moneyshot — he’s been routinely smoking pot in the house but he just has NO IDEA how his son might have learned how to use a lighter and inhale a breath? This commercial is also really helpful for the 99% of dads who don’t constantly smoke pot at home
1. Ninja Turtles Pot PSA
When an extremely fearless bully offers you three huge joints in the middle of your elementary school hallway, take it from the Ninja Turtles — no, don’t get a pizza, Michaelangelo – get a teacher! Then call the bully an insult from a 70s blacksploitation movie, and you are in the clear
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Singin’ and Dancin’ 80s PSA (crappy quality), Rachel Leigh Cook Loses It, Dad Draws On Kid’s Forehead, Stop Looking At Me, Guy Tries To Outrun Dog
There are literally hundreds more, feel free to drop ‘em in the comments!







February 10th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
i find it funny that there arent any anti-alcohol or tobacco ads, seeing as they have killed more people than all illegal drugs put together
February 11th, 2008 at 5:53 am
I like how the ninja turtle one theres a 10 year old dealing to a 7 year old… I didnt even know what pot was until I was 14 or 15
February 11th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Yeah, I think that to, tobaccos kill more people then marihuana. I wish i can quit tobaccos :(.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
the 60s and 50s had hillarious adds for smoking making out how cool it is i actually get most of that i only found 1 funny
February 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
a ha ha ha! crack can kill you! yeah but how many people smoke it? millions. how many die from it? hundreds. the ratio of use to deaths is higher for ladders. hey, maybe we should implement a ladder control strategy which consists of making ladders illegal and giving control entirely to people prepared to break the law for large sums of money?
February 11th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Man that turtles one brings back memories…lol
“I’m not a chicken…you’re a turkey!!”..haha classic
February 13th, 2008 at 1:03 am
haha i like how the stoner turtle offers up a pizza after smoking a couple j’s- hilarious. yea its funny how marijuana has a total of zero deaths per year and yet tobacco and alcohol aren’t mentioned.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
for 30 odd years, mj and more have been banned, the propaganda getting dumber and more desperate each year, no wonder, its hard to make money off such a stupid idea, but amazingly theyve succeeded for 30 years.
making drugs available to millions more than before and increasing the variety, although also making sure lots of crap is sold, some of it deadly, since no one handles quality control.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:21 am
The ONDCP, the US government agency responsible for this idiocy, knows what it’s doing. That ought to stand for Office of National Drug Consumption Propaganda.
Here’s the sordid truth: the reason you see more Dumb Ads about weed than drugs that’ll actually hurt ya? Weed tends to attract young able bodied people. It’s kept illegal for two reasons. One is the pharmaceutical corporations cannot patent a plant, so if it gets legalised, can you imagine all the antidepressants, painkillers, cancer meds and aspirins people would not be spending billions on each year? The other reason is scarier. They WANT you to buy drugs. And get caught and sent to jail. Ever heard of the cheapest labor force in America? It’s called “slavery” and it did not end with the Civil War. Particularly in the Midwest and South USA, corporations run prisons now and farm out the labor to other companies, and everyone gets rich, while meanwhile, hordes of harmless stoners work for free.
What a hideous scam.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:42 am
not included but should have been: the cartoon one where the girl leaves town with the space alien because her boyfriend won’t stop smoking pot. Dude, WTF?