Partnership for a Drug-Free America
From Drug Rehab Wiki
Founded by Richard T. O’Reilly in 1986, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) is a nonprofit organization that aims to mobilize parents of pre-teens, teens, and young adults and the members of the broadcasting/communications industries to safeguard children from substance abuse. Since its inception, the motivation behind the coalition’s mission is to utilize media and advertising methods to reduce the sensationalism of illicit drug use. The Partnership first proposed that by raising one million dollars in funds per day, one of their advertisements would be viewed by at least one member of every American household each day, thereby successfully educating and promoting the anti-drug message. The Partnership’s inception coincided with the Reagan-Bush administrations’ handling of the War on Drugs, and was publicly supported by President George H.W. Bush.
O’Reilly teamed with Philip Joanou, a board member from the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and formed PDFA based on the concept that advertising campaigns could help reverse the acceptance of positive associations linked to drug use, in a manner parallel to how advertising is used to convince the public to buy consumable products. The Partnership’s public service announcements were (and still are) broadcast through donated media slots in television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and even telephone directories, and became very recognizable among the public.
Their most memorable advertisements include the “This is your brain on drugs” television commercials, and the newspaper advertisement involving a pre-teen girl in a denim jacket with the message “What she’s going through isn’t a phase. It’s an ounce a week.” Such advertisements were intended to attract parents’ attention and cause reactive behavior towards combating the dangers of illicit drug use among their children. The advertisements are also designed not only to make drugs appear deadly, but to seem “uncool” to adolescents in an effort to “denormalize” drug use.
PDFA hosts the website drugfree.org, which contains a breadth of information for parents seeking information on adolescent drug use, suspicion of drug use, programs on prevention, and methods of intervention.
