This new spot, titled "Pete's Couch," doesn't offend me. It acknowledges that smoking weed on your buddy's sofa is the "safest thing in the world." (Which is true. I actually had a friend named Pete in high school, and we did get high on his couch. No turmoil ensued.) The ad's main contention is that it's important to get off that couch and out into the world, where you can do things like ice skate with other teens. (Also true. It is indeed good to engage with the outside world, instead of just sitting in your rec room. Though I'd note that it's possible to smoke pot in your rec room one day and then go ice skating the next. Or even just smoke pot and immediately go ice skating--which, come to think of it, sounds like a blast. Who's in?)

Stevenson notes that the ad is a departure from the usual reefer-madness tone of the ONDCP ads which previously used scare tactics.

Finally, an admission that using pot isn't necessarily calamitous. It's possible we're seeing this about-face only because previous scare-tactic ads were recently proved to increase drug use. But either way, I applaud the new, more truthful strategy. Lying is never what you want from your government (even if you've grown accustomed to it).

The next question, since the ads are aimed at kids, is:

What should we be telling kids about drugs? I remember once seeing an anti-drug ad from way back when (I'm guessing the mid-1950s). Black-and-white footage showed happy kids horsing around on a playground while the kindly narrator offered his view that it's more fulfilling to find our bliss in life without mixing in the fog and dependency of drug abuse. Totally fair point, made without resorting to exaggeration or untruth. I recall thinking at the time that I wished modern anti-drug ads could be so reasonable. Instead, recent PSAs have suggested that drug use leads to: 1) Shooting your friend in the head, 2) running over a little girl on her bike, and 3) helping the terrorists.

I wonder why there should be anti-marijuana ads at all. I sure don't want my tax dollars spent on them. I don't think my kid, and rightfully so, would have done anything but laugh at them. Stevenson then goes on to compare the ad to another of the ONDCP's ads:

In "Whatever," a straight-edge kid talks about chaperoning his stoned friends around, acting as designated driver and as a sort of den mother for his wasted buddies. The point is that this kid makes his own decisions and chooses to stay off drugs even though his friends are getting high. Aside from cloaking the stoner kids' faces in shadows (as though smoking pot makes them incorporeal nothings), the ad is done in a low-key, nonhyperbolic way. I like that it seems to say it's OK to be friends with pot smokers (instead of instantly calling the cops on them, as past ads might have recommended).

I'm not okay with that ad. It doesn't address the circumstance of when your kid is going out at night and tells you someone else is the designated driver. If I were in that situation would I confront my kid with the obvious, that it meant she might be getting high that night? No. I'd be counting my blessings that she and her friends were so responsible.

Of course, I don't have a daughter. But I think the TL kid would agree with me.