Effects
Evidence shows the use and abuse of illegal recreational drugs significantly declined during the Reagan presidency. According to research conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, fewer young people in the 1980s were using illicit drugs. High school seniors using cannabis dropped from 50.1% in 1978 to 36% in 1987, to 12% in 1991 and the percentage of students using other drugs decreased similarly. Psychedelic drug use dropped from 11% to 6%, cocaine from 12% to 10%, and heroin from 1% to 0.5%.
Nancy Reagan's related efforts increased public awareness of drug use, but a direct relationship between reduced drug use and the Just Say No campaign cannot be established.
The campaign drew some criticism, including that the program was too costly. It was also argued that the program did not go far enough in addressing many social issues including unemployment, poverty, and family dissolution. Nancy Reagan's approach to promoting drug awareness was also labeled simplistic by critics who argued that the solution was reduced to a catch phrase.
Read more about this topic: Just Say No
Famous quotes containing the word effects:
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)