Trump Calls for Really Great Ad Campaign Telling Kids Not to Use Drugs

Too bad nobody’s thought of running anti-drug ads before.

The president’s long-delayed and underwhelming declaration of a “public-health emergency” to deal with the opioid crisis has a lot of public policy implications, as Eric Levitz discussed in his analysis of what the administration is and is not prepared to do.

But you’d have to guess the president’s own chief prescription was best captured by Axios:

Trump shared his personal story of his brother’s alcohol abuse and offered a solution to the opioid crisis: “Really tough, really big, really great advertising so we get to people before they start.” His prediction: “If we can teach young people not to take drugs … it’s really, really easy not to take them.”

Got that? We need an ad campaign to tell young people not to take drugs, and then it will all be “really, really easy.”

Hey, Mr. President, I have an idea for a “really big, really great” ad slogan: JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS.

And here’s another one. Imagine someone holding an egg and saying: “This is your brain.” And then a pan, with the person saying: “This is drugs.” And here’s the cool part for kids: The egg is broken and poured into the pan. It sizzles. And the person says: “This is your brain on drugs.”

That’s all I’ve got for free.

Trump Calls for Really Great Ad Campaign Against Drugs