Introduction

When the U.S. government wants to influence its citizens, it does so through the mass media. This book is about one such campaign and its effects. The governments “war on drugs” in the mid-1980s was designed to reduce demand for illegal drugs by educating the public about the dangers of drugs and hence changing its attitudes toward drugs. The war was waged on the battleground of the nation's newspapers, television networks, and news magazines, with the media not only voluntarily running government public service announcements for free, but also dramatically increasing their news coverage of illegal drugs during 1986. Public concern with illegal drugs rose during the period.