Officials Unveil New Drug-Free NH Ad Campaign

The Partnership for a Drug-Free NH will soon be waging a somewhat graphic advertising campaign directed at parents, showing them alarming new statistics about drug and alcohol usage with pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults.

The campaign features both display and video advertising with young children preparing to partake in the consumption of alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drugs. It then reveals a recent statistic and then invites the viewer or reader to “check the stats” at checkthestatsnh.org.

While New Hampshire is considered one of the healthiest states in the country, the latest statistics show that the Granite State ranks second in the nation in 12- to 20-year-old alcohol usage, in the Top 10 of marijuana usage for 12- to 17-year-olds, with one in five high school students reportedly admitting to abuse of prescription drugs in 2012, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

On March 13, at the Statehouse, officials unveiled some of the data, broadcast the advertising, and spoke about a new “Champions” campaign that organizers hope will reverse the current trends and re-focus family efforts to protect children for substance abuse.

The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has made a $12 million, 10-year commitment to fund prevention and coalition efforts around the state, including the advertising.

“This campaign is shooting to raise awareness, change the dialogue in New Hampshire, and really change the conversation about the significance of our drug and alcohol epidemic, broadly,” said Timothy Rourke, the chairman of the Governor's Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment, and a point person for the foundation.

Gov. Maggie Hassan, D-Exeter, echoed Rourke’s comments and commended the “Champions” who were making a commitment to sign onto the initiative.

“As Timothy said, substance abuse is a major challenge,” Hassan noted. “It strains our families. It hurts the productivity of our workers. It undermines the safety of our communities.”

Focusing on parents was key, Hassan said. She noted that the latest data, showing that 10 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 had used marijuana during the last month, was one of the highest rates in the country, and the prescription drug abuse was “a problem in its own right and could lead to heroin addiction as well.” Heroin usage is on the rise in New Hampshire and around the country, she stated.

“We know that alcohol and drug abuse hurts our children’s development and has real long-term health effects,” she said.

Hassan said the new Medicaid expansion effort though would help with treatment across the state. The education effort, she added, would address the issue at the grassroots.

Jennifer Cusato, the director of Partnership, noted that during the last few years, the organization had a great collaborative with broadcasters with public service announcements calling attention to the problems. In 2010, the organization, with help from its coalition partners, focused on becoming an independent nonprofit and diverted its education initiatives to parents, so they would know what was going on in relation to drug and alcohol abuse among young people. The organization hired M5 Marketing Communications and the culmination of that work is the current campaign that launches this year.

Dick Ober, the president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, said the organization was backing the effort because it was “unacceptable” that the state’s data was so high and that community leaders, officials, and parents lacked the understanding of how damaging substance abuse was to both kids and the economy.

“We can and we must turn that around,” he said.

Ober said the damage to the economy and health “was huge” and with a low birth rate in the state, any damage to young people was unacceptable. He said the money the foundation was committing to the effort was “a cornerstone of that campaign” to educate parents and focus on the problem with significant private resources. Ober said the ads might be considered shocking but what was more shocking was “the inaction towards the crisis that this represents.”

Both state and federal officials were on-hand or sent representatives to back the “Champions” effort.