• by Danielle Oster , November 28, 2025

While drunk driving remains the primary risk on the roads during the holiday season, a new PSA campaign focuses on cannabis-impaired drivers -- and the prevalence of nonchalant attitudes about driving high that make it a risk younger drivers may not take as seriously.

Ahead of the holiday season, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Ad Council launched a campaign designed to disrupt such attitudes with a stark message: “If you feel different, you drive different.”

At its center is a 60-second PSA depicting a stark example of such attitudes, with a particularly dire outcome. The video follows a young man who first tells his friend “If anything…I’m more careful,” while running a stop sign. After hitting a vape pen while driving, he collides with an oncoming car. We next hear sirens and see him staring shocked into the camera, while text on the screen explains the scene is based on  “the real story of a marijuana-impaired driver convicted of killing a 4-year-old.”

The campaign launched with a particular focus on men aged 18-34 -- the group most likely to drive high, according to research by the NHTSA.

The effort follows a drunk-driving PSA campaign from the NHTSA and Ad Council which launched this summer, and is part of a wider, long-running drug-impaired driving prevention continuing its “Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving” message.

“Our research shows some young men don’t see the risk associated with driving while high -- and even more concerning, some even believe it makes them better drivers,” Ad Council Chief Development Officer Michelle Hillman said in a statement.

The Ad Council and NHTSA partnered with creative agency Standard Practice and production company Spark & Riot, who worked on the campaign pro-bono. “Tell That To Them” is running nationally across TV, digital, print, and OOH, in space donated by Ad Council media partners. The campaign strategy stems from research published by NHTSA and Ad Council in February that looked at results from virtual focus groups with millennial and Gen Z men.

“The rationalizations we heard in research were a reminder of how easy it can be to justify dangerous choices and how important it is to challenge those assumptions,” Standard Practice Creative Director Steve Dolan said in a statement. “Driving under the influence is never safe, and [this creative] challenges common misconceptions in an honest, relatable way.”