Rock Against Drugs

 While the Parents' Music Resource Center was clling for voluntary warning lables on rock music and First Lady was telling young people to "Just Say No" to drugs----both with limited results-----rock musicians were doing their own thing to help young people grapple with the temptations of drug and alcohol abuse.

A sereis of television commercials aired in the late 1980s----- many on MTV--- featured rock musicians speaking out against drugs. The project, called Rock Against Drugs (RAD), used a refreshing and effective approach to get the antidrug messages before teenagers. Instead of talking down to the teenage audience and attmepting to scare them, the RAD commercials attempted to get the message across without betraying the rebellion and energy of rock-'n'-roll.

Steve Jones----whose colleague, Sid vicious of the Sex Pistols, died of a heroin overdose---- was pictured looking up from his motorcycle snarling " Drugs suck." Vince Neil of Motley Crue ws quoted as saying" I still party with the best of them but now I do it clean."

Although it's impossible to measure the effectiveness of these commercials, letters from fans seemed to indicate some success. One high-school student wrote MTV to say that the commerical by Bon Jovi encouraged him to stop taking drugs. "Those guys were the only people I would listen to," he wrote. " They changed my life around, " another fan wrote to rocker Ronnie Dio. " Teachers can preach for hours about how bad drugs are and I still went out and got high. But man, once I heard you say how  stupid drugs are, I never toched them again !"

In addition to the antidrug commercials, the rock industry was combating substance abuse in the lyrics of many of its songs. Bob seger's "American Storm," Huey Lewis's " I Want A New Drug" and Glen Frey's "Smuggler's Blues" all carried antidrug messages. While PMRC and religious groups were condemning KISS for singing satanic messages, one of the group's constant messages for more than 10 years was not to use drugs.

The irony of the decade of the 1980s was that while people were banding together in fear of the evils of rock music, this powerful mass-communication medium was successfully combating one of society's most serious problems-----drug abuse.