[11][1] She worked at the Ted Bates advertising agency before joining the Partnership for a Drug-Free America in 1986 as one of the founders.

Grants from the advertising association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and businesses provided funding to enable the agency to operate.

[12] Marston identified two key perceptions involved with the decision by young kids to experiment with drugs: (1) the risk to the user and (2) possible social disapproval, and the resulting media campaigns focused on both messages.

[13] In the middle of the 1990s, research suggested that not only teenagers were vulnerable to drugs, but pre-teenagers as well, and Marston led an advertising effort to discourage early experimentation.

[14][15] She led anti-drug advertising efforts geared towards inner-city youth,[6] and towards discouraging use of specific substances such as heroin,[5][16] Ecstasy,[17] and marijuana.