From the First Lady of the United States to the cast of UK children's TV drama 'Grange Hill', 'Just Say No' was a phrase on everyone's lips in the mid-1980s.
Part of the United States' 'War on Drugs', 'Just Say No' acted as the slogan for First Lady Nancy Reagan's campaign to discourage young people from experimenting with drugs. By using her status to raise awareness of issues surrounding substance abuse in the USA, Mrs Reagan followed in a long tradition of First Ladies championing specific social causes during their husbands' presidencies. Though the effectiveness of the campaign has since been largely disproven, and the War on Drugs continues to be controversial, in the mid-1980s the simplicity of this message combined with rising rates of recreational drug use meant it spread rapidly throughout the United States and beyond.
The position of First Lady of the United States poses unique challenges. There is no formal job description or training, and the occupants are granted a great deal of flexibility in how they choose to use their platform. Though the First Lady is often expected to assist her husband during his time in office, some First Ladies have found themselves accused of 'interfering' in political affairs as a result. Since they are not directly elected, First Ladies have to strike a careful balance between being supportive and becoming too politically engaged. In the words of historian James G Benze Jr, 'First Ladies suffer from a fundamental ambiguity about the position of First Lady and the role that she should play, combined with a larger cultural ambivalence about the role of women in American society'.
There is a risk that the First Lady either appears too politically active, therefore overstepping the perceived boundaries of the role, or she does not engage sufficiently with the American people, and therefore appears elitist or disinterested. By the 1980s the position of First Lady was akin to celebrity status, which resulted in even greater scrutiny of the women who held this position. At least since the Kennedys occupied the White House, newspapers and gossip columns had lavished attention on the First Family and their private lives. Therefore, the privileges that the First Lady could utilise to support various causes came alongside a need to adhere to the public's expectations for how a First Lady could (or should) behave. Many First Ladies have chosen to overcome these challenges by turning their attention to non-partisan social issues, and Nancy Reagan was one such example.
such a topical social issue was undoubtedly part of a bid to improve [Mrs Reagan's] image
At the beginning of the Reagans' eight years in the White House, Mrs Reagan was accused of having frivolous interests in high-end fashion and décor, and not being sufficiently interested in supporting women's issues. In late 1981, a 'Newsweek' poll showed that 61 per cent of Americans felt that she was placing 'too much emphasis on style and elegance' in her public and private life, which was particularly controversial given the national economic turmoil of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Finding a cause to champion worked wonders for improving her image during this period.
Though she had been interested in tackling issues surrounding substance abuse before her husband took office, her renewed attention to championing such a topical social issue was undoubtedly part of a bid to improve her image. Her numerous television appearances and public remarks included a cameo on the television show 'Diff'rent Strokes', a stint as a guest presenter on ABC's 'Good Morning America' where she interviewed drug addicts and their families, and starring in a two-hour documentary on substance abuse for PBS. The effectiveness of her campaign was reflected in Mrs Reagan's cover story for 'TIME' magazine in January 1985, which announced that 'in the last two years she has probably become an outright political plus, winning friends and influencing people'. This carefully crafted PR campaign, aided by some of President Reagan's closest advisors, Michael Deaver and Richard Wirthlin, was vital to improving Mrs Reagan's image, countering accusations that she was elitist and frivolous and portraying her as a caring, maternal figure with a vested interest in the issues affecting American families.
Most of the women to occupy the role of First Lady championed social causes that were important to them, and which tended to appeal to a bi-partisan audience. For instance, Lady Bird Johnson created the 'First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Capital', while Pat Nixon encouraged people to devote time to voluntary causes across the nation. Betty Ford spoke openly about her diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer, encouraging other women to seek treatment. Rosalyn Carter championed a number of causes, among them mental health, support for the arts, and broader community work. Mrs Reagan was therefore using the strategy that many of her predecessors had used to give some structure and substance to her role as First Lady. Although the 'Just Say No' campaign was not the only issue Mrs Reagan championed during her time in the White House, it was the one she focussed on and is now best-remembered for.
Mrs Reagan's decision to support an anti-drug campaign made sense given the context of the United States' so-called 'War on Drugs'. In the early 1970s President Nixon had referred to drugs as 'public enemy number one', in response to rising drug use in the 1960s. Nixon increased the severity of sentences associated with possession and distribution of drugs.
After Nixon's resignation following the Watergate Scandal, attention to this issue subsided for a few years, but it returned under President Reagan. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was a key piece of Reagan-era legislation, which introduced minimum sentencing for specific drug-related crimes. The Act was accused of having racist implications given that it enforced higher sentences for use of crack cocaine, more prevalent in African American communities, than for the same quantity of powder cocaine (more commonly used by middle-class white Americans). Adding to the controversy, the relationship between the United States' skyrocketing incarceration rates during this period are closely-linked to the fervour of the War on Drugs. It was clear that drugs were a growing cause for concern for Americans in the 1980s, and Reagan's 'zero tolerance' policy regarding drug possession has had lasting effects. In 2019 almost half of incarcerated Americans are in prison due to drug-related offenses.
debates had been raging … for nearly a century regarding the abuse of various substances
While Reagan and his administration advocated a 'zero tolerance' policy for drug use, hoping that it would reduce demand for and therefore supply of drugs, Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign advocated abstinence from illegal substances. This was one of two strategies advocated by groups trying to tackle the rising issue of substance abuse in the United States. While 'Just Say No' supported a policy of abstinence, the more liberal argument, dubbed 'Just Say Know', claimed that educating young people about the realities of drug use would allow them to make safer and more informed decisions if they were tempted to experiment.
This was not a new phenomenon: similar debates had been raging in the United States for nearly a century regarding the abuse of various substances. Nearly 100 years before Nixon announced the nation's 'War on Drugs', the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) tried to encourage anti-alcohol education in schools, with a view that drinking in moderation was impossible. Their logic was that abstinence was the best means of avoiding the adverse consequences of excessive alcohol consumption, and this was precisely what 'Just Say No' believed to be true for other addictive substances.
What did 'Just Say No' look like in practice? The slogan and Mrs Reagan's extensive public appearances were complemented by educational programmes across the United States. In 1984 the Drug Abuse Resistance Education project (D.A.R.E.) was founded in Los Angeles by Police Chief Daryl F Gates. The project arranged for uniformed police officers to visit schools to educate young people about drugs and encourage them to pledge not to experiment with recreational drug use, and it went on to become the largest project of its kind. At its most successful, around 75 per cent of American schools were involved in the scheme.
However, the effectiveness of the programme has subsequently been discredited, with studies showing that joining the D.A.R.E. project had minimal impact on a person's likelihood to use drugs in later life. In fact, within some demographics, enrolment in the D.A.R.E. programme made people statistically more likely to experiment with drugs. However, in the 1980s and into the 1990s the programme was phenomenally popular, and was exported to British schools in 1995. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library claims that, alongside D.A.R.E., by 1989 over 12,000 'Just Say No' clubs had been set up across the world, where young people could pledge to abstain from drug use. Encouraging children to pledge their abstinence from substance abuse rather than educating them about the dangers and allowing them to make informed choices may strike modern audiences as naïve, but it was nevertheless an incredibly popular strategy throughout the 1980s.
One of the most well-known implications of the 'Just Say No' campaign for British audiences was, of course, its influence on the UK children's television drama 'Grange Hill'. The cast released a single-titled 'Just Say No' which encouraged children to challenge peer pressure by saying 'no' to drugs. It peaked at number five in the UK Singles Charts in 1986. The show also included a storyline where one of the characters, Samuel 'Zammo' McGuire, battled with a heroin addiction. Depicting this plot line was controversial, but it won the young cast a trip to Washington DC to perform their single at the White House in front of Nancy Reagan, in one of the 1980s' most bizarre moments of cultural cross-over.
'Just Say No' was a topical and widely-discussed campaign, but it had virtually no effect on the young people it was intended to help. In fact, the most valuable repercussion of Nancy Reagan's campaign may well be the example she set to future First Ladies rather than any impact on Americans' relationships with addictive substances. Her successors have chosen various issues to champion, just as she did, and have grappled with the challenges of their office in various ways. Most recently, Michelle Obama adopted a range of causes including encouraging healthy lifestyles for children to combat issues of childhood obesity, and Melania Trump announced her 'official' agenda, 'Be Best', in May 2018.
In terms of 'Just Say No', the notion that addiction could be overcome or avoided simply by having the willpower to say 'no' may seem simplistic to modern-day audiences. Although abstinence from harmful substances is sensible, the reasons people use drugs in the first place are complex and personal, as are the reasons for continuing to use drugs over time. Without understanding the root causes, campaigns about willpower can only be expected to have limited success, and are likely fail to address the underlying issues. Studies of young people who were involved in abstinence-focused groups such as D.A.R.E. or the 'Just Say No' clubs have shown that they were just as likely, if not more likely, to use drugs than those who were not involved in these projects, but lacked the relevant education to make safe choices regarding drug use. Though D.A.R.E. and similar organisations remain active, they no longer have the same reach as they did during their heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Of course, most damningly, the United States continues to have the world's highest incarceration rates, and the increased criminalisation of drugs in the 1980s played a key role in the staggering number of people in prisons across the nation.
