*Bobby Brown chopped it up with D. L. Hughley this week and made a surprising revelation about his connection to Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign in the 80’s and early 1990s.
During a conversation with The D.L. Hughley Show, Brown recounted his days as a member of New Edition, and claims it was him who gave Reagan the idea to start her “Just Say No” campaign.
“She got that from me. She got that from New Edition,” Brown says at the 1:35 minute mark of the clip above.
“She basically asked us what do we say when we’re offered drugs,” he continued. “We were young, we was 15, 14-years-old, and we just said, ‘We just say no.’ The campaign just flew from there. The ‘Just Say No’ campaign. We didn’t get no credit.”
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The phrase “Just Say No” first emerged in 1982, when Nancy Reagan visited Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California. When asked by a female student what to do if she was offered drugs, the First Lady reportedly responded: “Just say no.”
“Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious,” Regan said her 1986 address to the nation (see clip above). “They work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children’s lives, just as they’ve done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we close, they open a new door to death.”
She added, “Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say no.”
As noted by Think Progress, decades after Reagan’s message to Americans, “Just Say No” is best known as a punchline because “saying no to drugs didn’t actually work,” the outlet writes.
Meanwhile, the irony of Brown’s statement is that he has been open about his past drug abuse and struggle to kick addiction.
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