This is Your Government, On YouTube
Hoping to target a young audience, the U.S. Government has turned to YouTube to educate young people about the dangers of drugs.
For some, the addition of anti-drug messages may seem comical, especially considering the government's videos could sit alongside others whose message would so obviously contradict what the White House is trying to say. However, government officials would beg to differ.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy is the agency behind these videos. To be posted on YouTube are television advertisements, drug policy announcements, and other exclusive content. ONDCP says the use of the social video site would help to spread the message on how the government is working to combat illegal drugs.
"We know that in order to remain effective communicators in this new information age, public institutions must adapt to meet the realities of these promising technologies," Bush administration drug czar John Walters said.
The ONDCP has also used other Internet technologies in order to spread its message, including launching a blog in February 2005, and later podcasts of speeches and commentary from anti-drug officials.
Officials said since the YouTube service is free to upload to, it would cost taxpayers practically nothing to put the videos on the site. All videos uploaded would have been previously produced and paid for by the agency, they said.
To ensure the videos are seen by the teens and twenty-somethings the agency hopes to target, the government has linked its videos to keywords that youths may search in order to view information about drugs.
People who search for the "war on drugs," "peer-pressure," "marijuana," "weed," "ONDCP" or "420," a popular reference to marijuana, would all find the government's video's interspersed within the search results, the agency said.
Reaction to the service has been mixed. While some analysts called the move "adventurous," others said the social video site was the wrong place to attempt to tackle such a serious message.