I think that one of YouTube’s most important functions in society is to preserve important cultural references, such as 1980s anti-drug PSAs.

I don’t know whether The Partnership for a Drug Free America ever convinced anyone to not use drugs. For all I know, their over-the-top ads may have had the opposite effect and convinced some people that drugs were cool, or at least not that bad if people need to resort to this kind of ad rather than actual argumentation or fact. (One of the potential hazards of rhetoric which is devoid of rational argumentation rather than an augment to rational argumentation, since the drugs they were primarily concerned with such as cocaine and heroin are, in fact, extraordinarily bad ideas to mess around with.)

Then again, for all I know these ads actually did some good and scared someone enough to not try drugs that might have wrecked their life.

Either way, the Partnership for a Drug Free America sure gave us some wonderful cultural references to make jokes with. And YouTube enables us to explain these jokes to our children in ways that they get.