This is the third of 15 show-stopping communication campaigns created to raise awareness and catalyse change around significant public issues. A partnership between the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Ad Council, and truth initiative looked to educate the public on a growing nationwide opioid problem.
Opioid dependence can happen in just five days, says the tagline. With many young adults not knowing the power of opioids and quickly becoming addicted.
The ads depict, through stories, the lengths gone to satisfy their new opioid addiction.
The aim of the campaign is to show that addiction isn’t limited to the people using just the illegal opioids, like heroin. Misuse of prescription opioids is a huge part of the opioid epidemic. Misuse includes people with a prescription not taking it as prescribed–taking too many pills at once, for example–or people without a prescription taking pills they get from a family medicine cabinet, friends, random strangers at a party or drug dealers selling pills illegally.
And because of this, a lot of people are dying. In 2016, more than 42,000 people died of opioid overdoses in the U.S.
Based on true stories of those who’ve gone to extreme lengths to get more opioids, new spots from truth® aim to put an end to the opioid epidemic. Learn the Truth About Opioids at opioids.thetruth.com