This ad, from what I assume to be the Ford or Carter years, is relatively balanced and non-sensationalist in its treatment of the subject matter, eg. the pusher is at one point allowed to get in the last word(about schizophrenia from amphetamines being temporary), and the anti-drug character isn't allowed to say anything more ominous about marijuana than that the jury is still out on the question of its effects. Also, the ad takes the time to address each drug separately, rather than just bad-mouthing a vaguely defined product known as "drugs".
Fast-forward a decade, to the era of Nancy Reagan and the Partnership For a Drug Free America, and we've got incoherent metaphors about frying eggs, insinuations about marijuana making people infertile or shutting down brain function, plus of course the undifferentiated use of the words "drugs" in phrases like "Drugs Kill". Apart from the dubious facts and logic, a lot of this stuff was just begging to be mocked by its target audience. Which, of course, it was, as were the showboating drug-tests taken by politicians and celebrities.
So, is there any way the anti-drug campaigns of that era could have been conducted with a little more thoughtfulness, subtlety, and truthfulness? Or was it just inevitable that it was all going to descend into over-the-top histrionics and moralizing?
I'm thinking here also of the more recent Montana Meth Project, which I think is generally considered to be a credible and accurate treatment of its subject matter, probably because it sticks pretty close to the documented reality of the drug itself. As opposed to Mrs, Reagan showing up on Diff'rent Strokes and telling Sam "I recently heard about a little boy who smoked marijuana, and he hurt his sister very badly." (Okay, that might have happened somewhere, but it's hardly the norm, and IIRC she didn't have a source for the story.)