Just Say No

[1] The campaign emerged from a substance abuse prevention program supported by the National Institutes of Health, pioneered in the 1970s by University of Houston Social Psychology Professor Richard I. Evans.

The anti-drug movement was among the resistance skills recommended in response to low peer pressure, and Nancy Reagan's larger campaign proved to be an effective dissemination of this social inoculation strategy.

[1] Upon her husband's election to the presidency, she returned to Daytop Village and outlined how she wished to help educate the youth.

Nancy Reagan's longtime Chief of Staff James Rosebush helped her expedite what she viewed as one of her legacies as First Lady.

[1]The "Just Say No" slogan was the creation of Robert Cox and David Cantor, advertising executives at the New York office of Needham, Harper & Steers/USA in the early 1980s.

[4] Nancy Reagan often attributed the origins of the phrase to a 1982 visit to Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California: when asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs by her peers, the First Lady responded, "Just say 'no'.

"[4][5][6] Just Say No club organizations within schools and school-run anti-drug programs soon became common, in which young people were making pacts not to use drugs.

With the media attention that the first lady received, she appeared on television talk shows, recorded public service announcements, and wrote guest articles.

[7] By the autumn of 1985, she had appeared on 23 talk shows, co-hosted an October 1983 episode of Good Morning America,[9] and starred in a two-hour PBS documentary on drug abuse.

[citation needed] In a 1992 paper, Evans et al. commented: that the "Just Say No" approach had been "taken out of context and redirected in form as a formula for preventing all substance abuse.