Partnership For A Drug Free Canada says the non-medical use of prescription drugs is on the rise among Canadian teenagers. The organization is literally getting in people’s faces with a new campaign to combat this trend.
With help from Proximity Canada and BBDO Toronto, Partnership for a Drug Free Canada put the ads on select transit shelters and restaurant bathrooms across Toronto, spreading the message that more kids are stealing prescriptions from their family medicine cabinets.
Rene Rouleau, creative director at Proximity Canada, said many parents don’t realize this is happening, and the campaign is meant to wake them up.
The ads are shown as a mirror reflection with the words “Drug Dealer” displayed beneath the consumer’s reflected image. It’s an intense statement, said Marc Paris, executive director of Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, but it will make people pay attention.
“We are focused on having very impactful messages,” he said. “We have to shake parents out of this ‘it’s not my kid’ syndrome. We have to be very intense and almost interruptive.”
In a recent survey from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 20% of surveyed teens said they’d taken prescription drugs to get high, and 75% of those said they stole the drugs from home.
The mirror and transit shelter ads will remain in various Newad and Zoom Media-managed spaces for another four weeks.
