This white message, however, might end up being a very big white lie. .
The major point of the commercial is to frighten people into supporting and even voting for anti-drug policies they never would have considered before. The images of AK-47 assault rifles, cars, bomb parts, and other equipment are clearly intended to make any American person become angry or afraid, and to lay the blame for the recent terrorist attacks partially on the drug users in our country. In addition to the terrifying images, clear text messages at the end point a big patriotic finger at drug dealers and drug users. To be fully effective, the commercial targets many different groups of people. First of all, teenagers are targeted because of the large amount of drug use in that age group. The message gives American teenagers who smoke marijuana subconscious nagging feelings telling them yet another reason why their actions are bad in the eyes of government and society. The next target audience of the ad is the average American citizen; any non drug-using, Christian, middle-class person sees the message as hard evidence that drugs caused the World Trade Center attacks, along with any other terrorist acts within the last 30 years. The final audience for this commercial must be older people, since they do not like to think about drugs at all, let alone as tools for terrorism. If my grandfather saw the commercial, he would likely say something like, "Those jerks who blew up the buildings got their money from drugs. Don't you do drugs, now." This is exactly the purpose of the commercial, and since elderly voters turn out to the polls in high numbers, the commercial is now becoming a powerful political tool. .
The multiple images shown throughout the commercial do serve a specific purpose. The house and the computer, for example, establish the subversive nature of the activities that will follow. It would be hard to assume that terrorists coordinate and perform their attacks without the help of computers, so while illustrating this, the commercial manages to quietly accuse computer companies and computer hackers of aiding terrorism.
