We see these pot ads on tv where they ground a kid because he or she was smoking pot. That part of the message was good. Then the moral commitee goes and fucks it up by saying something like the kid smoked pot and he was caught. THAT is sending a bad message. If you don't want your kid to smoke pot, you don't end the message by saying 'you were caught', or they're going to just wise up and simply not get caught, but still smoke. So: Smoke....but don't get caught. Moral? It's only illegal if you're caught.
Then I saw another one today where a kid was in an anyday situation but they're parental unit was simply in their mind and we could see them, and they would just continuously guide their kid to do or don't do certain things. Then just as someone offers the kid a joint, it goes on to say something like, "if you don't tell them not to smoke, how are they going to know?" I see this problem along the lines of a theological error. God made us to have free will, and he didn't tell us what to do or what not to do, so if someone's always around to tell us we won't be able to think for ourselves but will always be waiting for someone to make all our decisions for us. Too many parents try to pressure their kids into being something the kid does not want to be: a doctor, a dancer, a writer — something that makes a lot of money — either to hopefully make the kid happy and successfull or try to make the kid fix their parent's own mistakes or even get him to make money where they failed and eventually guilt the kid into paying for their debts.
Most recently I saw a good commercial, which at first, looked like another stupid, badly-messaged drug commercial. A boys father would continuously tell his son to keep hitting things — a baseball is the first thing that comes to mind — things like that, and then I started to think, 'oh god, they're gonna say if we don't tell our kids to take a hit off of a joint or a hit of acid...' and then the commercial started to end and the message was 'don't hit women'. It was a good commercial. Not terribly memorable and perhaps it should be redone so it doesn't look like a stock drug beginning ad, but one all it's own. It got a good message accross. Simple and to the point, no bullshit about getting caught or doing what our parents say. Okay, I know that may have looked a little like something from the last paragraph, but sometimes we NEED to teach our kids things instead of letting them decide. I say, if it sounds like a bad idea, it probably is, as where with drugs, it's a tough call for kids who don't have a lot of information about it. Perhaps if they were well-informed they could then make the right choice instead of being told what to do. It IS how we apply what we know to life situations. Simply with information.
