3 decades later, a mixed legacy for 'Just Say No'

Experts say the slogan brought new attention to drug abuse and helped focus research on how to prevent it.

"Overall the larger prevention community is thankful for large campaigns like 'Just Say No,' for the broad, population-level awareness they raise," said Derek Franklin, who heads the Washington Association for Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention.

[...] Allan Cohen was the executive director of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which had a federal contract to help states and local communities develop drug-abuse prevention programs.

Cohen's organization had promoted and adopted the program the first lady visited in Oakland, called Oakland Parents in Action, which taught children skills for refusing drugs offered by their peers.

Many researchers remain skeptical of the campaign's effectiveness, associating it with the first lady's calls to be intolerant of drug users or with the famous television commercial that featured an actor dropping an egg into a frying pan and saying, This is your brain on drugs.

Michelle Miller-Day, a professor at Chapman University in California, said the refrain might have been a simplistic message, but its popularity also focused the attention of researchers on the social context of drug use and on developing programs that would help youngsters refuse drugs or at least delay experimentation.

Cohen said there's no way to quantify the impact of "Just Say No," but it's unfair to conflate the campaign — a prevention effort aimed at middle or elementary school children — with criticism of the larger drug war or mass incarceration.