When Nancy Reagan told the world to "just say no" in the 1980s, it had a huge, powerful impact on rates of drug consumption. They went up. Enormously.
Now leading HIV charity GMFA (Gay Men Fighting Aids) is trying a radically different approach with Safer Chems, an NHS-backed campaign that seems almost deliberately designed to enrage middle England. The message of the project is this: If you are going to take drugs – say, at an all-weekend bareback slamming party – why not do it in a way that won't kill you?
The campaign comes with practical tips on how to do just that. These include using the plastic, fish-shaped, soy sauce bottles found in sushi boxes to measure out GHB, and popping along to London's Burrell Street Clinic to pick up a free "slamming" pack, with all the equipment and handy hints you need to safely inject – for instance – meth.
The move comes as concern among the medical community about LGBT drug use continues to swell, in particular over the use of party drugs.
These range from G (GHB/GHL) and MDMA to crystal methamphetamine and mephedrone, all of which are used for "chem" sex sessions.
Antidote, the counselling service for LGBT people with alcohol and drug problems, has seen a drastic rise in the number of clients seeking help. In 2005/6, three people sought treatment at the service for G use. In 2013/14, it was 334. For crystal meth, there were no clients asking for help with meth problems 10 years ago, but in 2013/14 there were 373.
Code, a specialist sexual health clinic in London for gay/bi men involved in hardcore sex and drugs use, found that 19% of its patients had used G and 10% had used meth in the past six months. In one London hospital – St Thomas' – 270 patients were treated in 2010 alone for medical problems associated with G use.
How many of the hospital admissions comprise LGBT people isn't known. But one of the main reasons for this new campaign is the alarming proportion of users who overdose through a basic lack of knowledge. A fifth of dabblers with G, for example, have accidentally overdosed, the Global Drugs Survey revealed.
The statistic chimes with the experience of users, who describe G as one of the hardest drugs to measure. Tiny increases in volume – even of half a millilitre – can dramatically influence the effects. Hence GMFA's suggestion of using the tiny soy sauce bottles.
One gay, male, thirtysomething professional who collapsed after taking G (and who wishes to remain anonymous) told BuzzFeed News:
"I had gone on a date with someone, we'd been for dinner and were having a nice time when we bumped into a group of his friends – a young, happy-go-lucky-crowd – at Shadow Lounge. It was just a Wednesday night, not a big clubbing weekend.
"About 11 o'clock they said, 'Do you want a shot of G?' And I said, 'Yeah sure!' I didn't really know about how those drugs work and I was already a bit pissed. I don't remember anything except that they were measuring out the G using the caps of those little minibar liquor bottles.
"The next thing I remember is coming round in the guy's bed. I felt so weird, like someone had tinkered with my brain. I was freezing cold and so psychologically stunned I couldn't piece anything together about what had happened. I had no sense of how I got there.
"The guy woke up and told me that I had collapsed and he and his friends had carried me through several streets of Soho back to his house, a good five- or 10-minute walk away. It was really, really scary. I know now that G can depress your respiratory system – I should have gone to A&E. I got back to mine the next day and felt very psychologically shaken, like, 'God, how did I put myself in this situation?'
"At the time I hardly knew anything about G. I'd done it a couple of times before and had never collapsed and was only vaguely aware that you could, so I wasn't watchful. I just entrusted other people who I thought knew what they were doing. Physically I was OK within hours but psychologically I felt like I'd been left with a chemical chill that hung around my body and a feeling of having put something very dangerous and horrible near the core workings of my brain. It felt like being whacked around the head with a frying pan."
It is stories like these, and the crossover between disinhibiting drugs and unsafe sex, that are behind GMFA’s campaign.
"A recent report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that campaigns intended to stop people taking drugs were not effective and, in some cases, increased the chance of people taking drugs," Liam Murphy, the campaign's manager, told us.
"That's why, after talking with Burrell Street Clinic ... we realised that we needed to come together to address the most urgent need – reducing the harms that come with 'chem' sex.
"The main trio of drugs – G, mephedrone, crystal meth – lower inhibitions, enhance sexual arousal, and are mostly cheap and easy to get. People are using these drugs for the first time at chillouts and sex parties, where they are given shots of G to drink and not told much else about it.
"We wanted to reach gay men already involved in the 'chem' sex scene and provide them with facts about what they are taking, guidance on how to dose the drugs, advice on how to negotiate safer sex, and help if they are looking to cut down or stop their drug use."
Such an approach might appall those in favour of a tough stance on drugs, but others are more supportive.
"In countries that have tried harm reduction schemes, deaths are dramatically lower than countries that have refused to do it," Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, told BuzzFeed News.
"In Britain, at the height of the AIDS crisis, Glasgow introduced a harm reduction project with clean needles, whereas Edinburgh refused. In Glasgow, 2% of intravenous drug users became HIV positive. In Edinburgh, by 1990 it was 85%. The evidence is overwhelming.
"We have to decide as a culture that we want drug users to stay alive. At the moment, they are the only minority group whose deaths people respond to with an aggressive indifference."