This past week my classmates and I dug deeper into the current effects and issues surrounding the opioid epidemic in the United States. As we begin to form a campaign towards adults between the ages of 18 and 25, we need to understand the background of what opioids specifically are, how they become dangerous, and looking at the difference between harm reduction, and just saying "stop".
My group and I began to brainstorm ideas of what we first think about when it comes to opioids, as none of us are involved with them, but are all within the age range we are targeting. I thought a lot about recent celebrity deaths, especially those related to fentanyl. We also came to the conclusion that they mess with a person's headspace, make them act in ways that are very different from their normal state, and that when seeing this, others aren't that sympathetic. We agreed that almost anyone hearing of someone addicted to opioids would put them in the "druggy" category, which we think is unfair and could be fair from true.
From this, we differentiated the ways that opioids could be released to the public, as well as the different ways someone could find themselves addicted to opioids. There are the people to use it as a recreation of sorts, but we think that most people in this addicted group were prescribed to take it by a doctor, and either took more than prescribed, were not warned of the effects, or passed spare pills on to others once they no longer needed them. This epidemic coming straight out of pharmacies was very interesting to us.
All in all, my group reflected on ways that young adults can find any interaction with these highly dangerous drugs, as well as different approaches we can take to establish ways of harm reduction. One important part of all of this is not saying "stop or you'll die," as that is all over the media with celebrities, but rather, "no matter how you became involved, these are steps you can take to help yourself." Being adults in this age range ourselves, we understand how difficult it is to grab someone's attention, especially with something daunting or serious like this, and are brainstorming tactics in which we can highlight relevance in current culture and spin it in a positive light. We want to turn a terrible epidemic that can disrupt those with even the lowest attention spans, and make them stop in their tracks to think in the opposite direction.
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