"They read scripts, yes."

January 8, 2022 1:10 PM

Prime Time Propaganda: How the White House Secretly Hooked Network TV on its Anti-Drug Message (Salon, 2000, see also NYT and WaPo). The author of the Salon article, Daniel Forbes, would report further on this program (and other Clinton-era anti-drug propaganda efforts) before it was quietly ended by George W. Bush, who hasn't used cocaine since 1974.
posted by box (23 comments total)

(I've been wondering for twenty years whether the anti-smoking episode of King of the Hill, Keeping Up With Our Joneses, was created as part of this program, and I'm hoping maybe somebody will know.)
posted by box at 1:12 PM on January 8, 2022

This is Salon, not Slate, no? This is really interesting, thanks for posting!!
posted by capnsue at 1:16 PM on January 8, 2022

Arggggh--yes, it's Salon, sorry about that.
posted by box at 1:18 PM on January 8, 2022

Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to shoehorn anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all -- network television programming.

Product placement has always been more insidious, in my mind. At least recreational drugs are upfront about their benefits, such as they are.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:20 PM on January 8, 2022

At least one show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was rejected after it showed itself to be immune to the drug office's worldview. "Drugs were an issue, but it wasn't on-strategy. It was otherworldly nonsense, very abstract and not like real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to our message," says someone in the drug-policy office camp who read and helped reject it.

i wonder if they are talking about the entirety of season 6 here?
posted by capnsue at 1:31 PM on January 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

I’m pretty sure the anti drug TV programming propaganda started under Ronald Reagan not Bill Clinton. Nancy Reagan who lead the anti-drug initiatives even did a guest spot on Different Strokes.
posted by interogative mood at 1:32 PM on January 8, 2022 [14 favorites]

Mod note: Did the ol' Salonification, carry on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:39 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Don't forget the infamous "this is your brain on drugs" ad. It was put out by the Partnership for A Drug-Free America, which got funding from a variety of sources, including: American Brands (Jim Beam whiskey), Philip Morris (Marlboro and Virginia Slims cigarettes, Miller beer), Anheuser Busch (Budweiser, Michelob, Busch beer), R.J. Reynolds (Camel, Salem, Winston cigarettes), and Big Pharma firms like Bristol Meyers-Squibb, Merck & Company and Proctor & Gamble. [Cite]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:02 PM on January 8, 2022 [15 favorites]

This reminds me of what I was thinking the other day: I would really, really like to see an oral history of how they made Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue. I know that most people involved would have reputations to uphold and wouldn't talk about it, but maybe the writers involved would admit that they couldn't have put out this bullshit without cocaine.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:19 PM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

At least one show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was rejected after it showed itself to be immune to the drug office's worldview. "Drugs were an issue, but it wasn't on-strategy. It was otherworldly nonsense, very abstract and not like real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to our message," says someone in the drug-policy office camp who read and helped reject it.

i wonder if they are talking about the entirety of season 6 here?

I would bet money that the episode they're talking about was season 4's Beer Bad, in which some beer is enchanted by a vengeful bartender to turn college students into literal cavemen. It's... not a good episode.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:28 PM on January 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

If anyone wanted to help me flesh out the history of government anti-drug propaganda further, I'm totally here for that.

Look, here's GWB getting slapped by the GAO for having the ONDCP produce 'news' segments without identifying the source.

Here's John Ehrlichman being the Lee Atwater of the war on drugs:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

posted by box at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2022 [19 favorites]

Speaking of King of the Hill, there was an episode that had Connie's cousin cooking meth (at the school science fair!), and one of Malcolm in the Middle where there's a cook session set up at the boys' home. Pretty ridiculously drug-war-preachy, extra ridiculous in retrospect when you consider that "heartland" meth cooks didn't need people of color to come in from LA to cook up their crystal, and Bryan Cranston's next big multi-season TV series job, respectively.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:40 PM on January 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

"It sounds to me like a form of propaganda that is, in effect, for sale," says media watchdog Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation. Terming it a "venal practice" and "a form of mind control," he adds, "It's breathtaking to me that any [network's] sense of obligation to the viewing audience has a dollar sign attached to it."

I also disapprove of this shit but lol buddy have you like existed in the world for any stretch of your life
posted by cubeb at 2:58 PM on January 8, 2022 [14 favorites]

I'm not the first to suggest this, but I'm pretty sure Hal (Malcom in the Middle) and Walter White exist in the same universe.

Which would make a fuck ton of sense considering the chaos featured in Malcom in the Middle.
posted by loquacious at 2:59 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also should point out that this article was published in January 2000
posted by cubeb at 3:03 PM on January 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm not the first to suggest this, but I'm pretty sure Hal (Malcom in the Middle) and Walter White exist in the same universe.

Breaking Bad Alternate Ending

Behind the Scenes Alternate Ending - From Breaking Bad to Malcolm in the Middle
posted by otherchaz at 6:27 PM on January 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

let's legalize drugs.
posted by clavdivs at 7:29 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

The Buffy episode that offended could have been the S2 episode with the swim team and the steroids.

And yeah this makes sense, there were so many mawkish anti-drug plots on 90s TV that I always assumed the government was incentivizing it somehow.
posted by grandiloquiet at 6:31 PM on January 9, 2022

How much did New Kids On The Block get from the Whitehouse for making DRUGS SUCK T-shirts part of their merch?
posted by acb at 3:43 AM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

After Donnie Wahlberg wore that 'War Sucks' t-shirt to the American Music Awards in 1991, they mysteriously never got the check.
posted by box at 5:29 AM on January 10, 2022

I'll never be able to erase the "dope" episode of Saved By The Bell (or the caffeine pills one) from my mind, so thank you federal government
posted by dis_integration at 5:34 AM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was just watching a season one episode of Star Trek: TNG ("Symbiosis") where Tasha Yar gives a preachy, patronizing anti-drug speech to Wesley and I remarked to my husband that they must have gotten some sort of government grant because it felt so out of place. But apparently it couldn't have been part of this particular program, since the episode was produced in 1988.
posted by zixyer at 10:33 AM on January 10, 2022

I’m pretty sure this program or a close replica was introduced during the Reagan administration as part of Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug work,
posted by interogative mood at 8:58 PM on January 10, 2022