<P> "Just Say No" was an advertising campaign, part of the U.S. "War on Drugs", prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s, to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying no . The slogan was created and championed by First Lady Nancy Reagan during her husband's presidency . </P> <P> 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 . Evans promoted a social inoculation model, which included teaching student skills to resist peer pressure and other social influences . The campaign involved University projects done by students across the nation . Jordan Zimmerman, then a student at USF, and later an advertising entrepreneur, won the campaign . 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 a useful dissemination of this social inoculation strategy . </P>

Who started the just say no to drugs campaign