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"Don't do drugs" is a Stock Aesop that has been sledgehammered into children's television shows at the request of the United States government. It usually results in Anvilicious moralizing and Very Special Episodes.
Although illegal drugs and misused legal drugs can have devastating effects on the lives of some users, Drugs Are Bad shows and commercials often exaggerate how bad they actually are, sometimes resulting in Narm. Often, even the villains of shows, when presented with an opportunity to sell drugs for profit, will decline on the grounds that Even Evil Has Standards.
And of course, drugs are nothing but bad — that is, television would rather kids believe that the only reason anyone takes drugs is because of external pressures and powerful addiction, rather than admit that drugs make people feel temporarily like everything is beautiful and/or they are golden gods. No, drugs make you feel paranoid, sweaty, scared and sick, but never good. Alternatively, drugs make people feel wonderful the first time they take them, but every subsequent time the same drug (or a harder one) makes them feel like worse than Hell. But it's too late, because they're already "hooked" after the first time.
See: The Aggressive Drug Dealer, that monster from the 90's who finds middle-class suburbanite kids where ever they are and forces them to take his drugs.
Examples:
Advertising
- The famous "This Is Your Brain On Drugs"
 TV Public Service Announcement.
- Avoided in commercials running on Canadian television: the message isn't that smoking marijuana is going to ruin your life, but that getting high and then driving, like drinking and driving, is a stupid idea.
- This troper's (Texas) high school had some posters to the same effect.
- One Narm-y Ad Council Public Service Announcement has a girl's dog tell her he wishes she would stop smoking marijuana. Left unsaid was that if your dog is talking to you, you have much larger problems than smoking marijuana.
- From the same people, the one with the guy burning his guitar because of marijuana. This troper to his sister: "I thought most guitar players used marijuana..."
- This troper's brother thinks that they designed the commercials to appeal to people who are high. It's scary how much sense that makes.
- But if you aren'tstoned, they make you want to be...
- This kind of PSA is parodied in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle when the titular characters are watching television. One teen pressures another teen into smoking marijuana; shortly afterwards, the kid grabs a rifle, aims it directly at his face, and pulls the trigger, thinking that he's invincible. Cue the SpaceWhaleAesop.
- The British Talk To FRANK service originated as a comparatively neutral source of information about drugs, but gradually started becoming more and more Anvilicious in their advertising, sometimes Completely Missing The Point (for example, blaming cocaine users for the harm caused by trafficking, instead of blaming the government for making such trafficking necessary).
Anime & Manga
- Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure part 5 features Giorno who tries to rise in the mafia, and he and many others in his Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits thinks that the part of the mafia focusing on drugs are the evil parts. Assassination? It's ok. "Protection services"? Fine and dandy. Drugs? Horror that must be defeated.
- In Full Metal Panic, one of the more focused on aspects of the evil of Amalgam is the fact that they drug the girls they kidnap along with their AS pilots (in order to induce the Ax Crazy psychological effects necessary). The fact that the organization goes around causing wars and mass destruction doesn't seem to hit Sousuke nearly as hard as the fact that they kidnap and drug girls (causing them to go crazy and become addicted). Then again, death has never been considered very important or horrible in Sousuke's mind...
Comic Books
Film
- The Even Evil Has Standards version is a key theme of The Godfather.
- Similarly, in Goodfellas, Henry Hill is warned by his bosses in The Mafia not to get involved in drugs... not so much because they disapprove of it, but because it'll bring the full weight of the federal government crashing down on top of them, which the bosses do not want. True enough, when Henry gets involved in drugs (both dealing and addicted), the feds bust in on the party and the good times are definitely over.
- The movie Die Hard made sure that annoying loser Harry Ellis used cocaine. This was probably done in equal parts to show how pathetically depressed he was, though.
- The Totally Radical and So Bad Its Good movie High School Confidential! offered these words of wisdom: "If you flake around with the weed, you'll end up using the harder stuff." That's mostly true, but that still doesn't make it any less Narmtacular.
- Parodied in Walk Hard: Dewey will frequently walk in on his drummer Sam engaging in some illicit narcotic accompanied by a crowd of beautiful young women. Sam will urgently tell Dewey that "you don't want no part in this!", but will then with the same urgent tone list all the great things about that particular drug. Dewey inevitably ends up hooked on it. For example, when Dewey notices friends smoking reefer:
Sam: No, Dewey, you don't want this. Get outta here!
Dewey Cox: You know what, I don't want no hangover. I can't get no hangover.
Sam: It doesn't give you a hangover!
Dewey: Wha-I get addicted to it or something?
Sam: It's not habit-forming!
Dewey: Oh, okay...well, I don't know...I don't want to overdose on it.
Sam: You can't OD on it!
Dewey: It's not gonna make me wanna have sex, is it?
Sam: It makes sex even better!
Dewey: Sounds kind of expensive.
Sam: It's the cheapest drug there is.
- Reefer Madness. The title says it all.
Literature
- This is one of the main points of A Scanner Darkly. The newest drug on the market gives a great high, but can cause hallucinations and dissociative personality disorder. The novel is told from the point of view of an undercover narc. Throughout the book he uses the drug to maintain his cover, watches several of his friends suffer mental breakdowns, begins to lose his sense of identity, ends up shipped off to an evil rehab clinic which actually manufactures the drug, and is then revealed to have been sent there by his own superiors. Everything about his breakdown was engineered, and he was basically a sacrificial lamb for the government. Because Drugs Are Bad. To be fair, the book is also very poignant and one of the best examples of this particular Aesop.
- Also of note is the book's epilogue/author's note. In it, Philip K. Dick explains he based most of the characters on people he knew and his own experiences in the drug culture. He then lists those people who inspired the novel (and who he feels were punished far more severely than the crime deserved). Most of them are then listed as deceased or suffering from permanent vascular damage or psychosis. One of the names on the list is himself.
- Also doing it right is Requiem For A Dream, which at first seems to be a story about the brilliance of drugs a la Altered States. This ends.
- House Of The Scorpion looks at the trope, depicting a nation where an entire nation is run by drug lords after deals were made with the U.S. and Mexican governments. The nation keeps illegals out of both countries, and doesn't ship drugs to either of them. In return, the two nations leave them alone to ship drugs to other places in the world. The Keepers, corrupt officials that run a work camp, are arrested not because of abuse of the boys, but because a failed drug test
- Subverted in The Wind Singer. Mumpo becomes somewhat addicted to chewing on some leaves used by one of the tribes the group has passed. When they awaken the beautiful, blond and evil Zars, they're so afraid and hungry that they can't concentrate on their task. Mumpo then shares the leaves with the others, and it eases their feelings, leaving them so high and giggly that they're halfway back before they know it.
- Go Ask Alice is basically "Drugs Are Bad: The Book"
- In David Eddings' Malloreon, Sadi presents Silk with a business proposal involving the setup and operation of a worldwide drug supply chain. Silk declines on the grounds that "a man has draw the line somewhere", despite Sadi's Long List of morally dubious acts about which Silk has few qualms.
- In other scenes, however, the main characters stand around laughing at what various minor characters had done under the influence of Sadi's drugs. They only try to put a stop to Sadi's business activities when he branches out into selling poison, and even then, they don't object to his selling recreational drugs.
Live Action TV
Music
New Media
- The About.com entry on marijuana says that the effects of it are "Distorted perception, problems with memory and learning, loss of coordination, trouble with thinking and problem-solving, increased heart rate and reduced blood pressure". Anyone reading that may wonder why people smoke marijuana in the first place. It's accurate, from a medical standpoint, but also something of a lie of omission.
Professional Wrestling
- C.M. Punk's whole Heel gimmick is pretty much telling everybody Drugs Are Bad over and over and over again, and wagging an accusatory finger towards the audience. Of course, in his mind, anything stronger than caffeine is worthy of scorn.
Video Games
- The "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen that used to appear in the Attract Mode of many arcade games (and in some places still does. There's also messages from the EPA).
- In the video game, SWAT 2, there's an entire campaign for the Terrorist side. While you're free to murder and take hostages throughout the campaign, one of the early missions opens with your boss chastising some of the terrorist members for growing marijuana for profit, and he orders you to set fire to the crop. Even Evil Has Standards.
- Used badly in the game based on The Witcher, characters show more contempt at their attempts to control the drug trade than their ranks including rapists and murderers. This is worse when it's a morally vague World Half Empty, so any kind of message (intended or not) doesn't fit.
- Averted in Star Craft where feeding your marines stimpacks doubles their effectiveness but damages them by about 1/4 of their health, but is necessary to utilize them effectively. Kind of played straight with the disclaimer though:
Side effects including insomnia, weight loss, tremors, grand mal seizures, mania/hypomania, paranoiac hallucinations, severe internal hemorrhaging and cerebral deterioration have all been declared nominal and well within Confederate acceptable safety margins.
- If you have the expansion, you can heal the damage from stimpacks with medics. And keep giving your marines stims. The result is, figuratively and literally, space marines on crack.
- Skooma a drinkable drug from the Elder Scrolls series is shown as highly addictive as well as causing brain damage. Or in game terms two points of intelligence damage per bottle, meaning 25 doses could leave you a vegetable.
- Haze features 'nectar' as a combat enhancing drug that has the unfortunate side effect of being more likely to kill you than the enemy.
Web Original
- Parodied in Red Vs Blue when Simmons tells the other members of Red team that he and Grif were drugged. Donut immediately assumes that they were intentionally abusing drugs and proceeds on a long tirade about how drugs are bad, much to Simmons' annoyance.
- Spoofed in the Saturday Morning Watchmen themesong. "Say no to drugs!" is sung while Rorschach is shown turning away from a dealer.
Western Animation
- Parodied in South Park's episode Ike's Wee-Wee, as quoted above.
- Several episodes of Captain Planet, including a memorable one in which Linka became addicted to drugs slipped into a pastry and a more hilarious one where the drugs were some sort of magically evil gems one ingested by pressing them against your skin until they were absorbed(!).
- Depicted in a fairly believable fashion in a Super Hero and Science Fiction context in Batman Beyond without being Anvilicious. In the "The Winning Edge," a leading school sports team is using a super steroid based on the supervillain Bane's venom chemical in skin induction applications called "slappers." It makes the kids stronger, but at a price of excessive aggression and profound weakness in withdrawal as their dependency grows. Furthermore, when Batman goes to question the aged Bane about it, he finds him in a senior's home a complete vegetable totally dependent on Venom to stay alive; the natural result of using it for decades.
- The Animated Adaptation of Rambo actually did an episode titled "Just Say No."
- GI Joe had an episode where the Joes team up with Freakin'' COBRA to take down a drug lord after one of the COBRA agent's sister gets hospitalized due to the drug lord's new product, "Spark". Cobra Commander only gets involved when the agent persuades him that, since drugs are big business, the drug lord is sure to have piles of cash on hand to steal. In a rare scene from a show heavy on the Bloodless Carnage the drug lord gets dropped into a vat of pure Spark and dies from a horrific overdose. It also turns out that the drug lord's bags of "cash" were really bags of shredded newspaper.
- Following G.I. Joe example above, C.O.P.S. Big Bad, "Big Boss", once used his power to keep drugs out of Empire City. He helps the good guys stop a drug lord when his own son, The Dragon (the dumb Breskero), gets affected.
- "Alone Again" from Jem fits this trope. Laura, the newest Starlight Girl, is so depressed over her parents's deaths that she's easy prey for a drug daler. Pity about the Anvilicious Aesop, since the first five minutes describing Laura's self-hate and loneliness are an intense Tear Jerker.
- The Simpsons kids' favorite cartoon, Itchy and Scratchy, spend a whole episode doing little more than standing on the screen and tepidly fighting. They end the episode with the non-sequitur "Kids, say no to drugs!" Bart and Lisa decide it was a pretty lifeless outing.
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