Pubdate: Sun, 19 Sep 2010
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2010 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Page: F1
Author: Lee Catterall

SENDING A METH MESSAGE - DOES IT WORK?

Meth Project Backers Hail Results But Doubt Rises Over Lasting Success

For the second year, graphic television ads showing actors portraying 
pathetic and physically damaged drug addicts remind people about the 
danger of methamphetamine -- but does the scary message work?

"It does not prevent future use. They're not effective," Jeanne Y. 
Ohta, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, says of 
the frightening TV commercial prepared by the Hawaii Meth Project.

The project and similar programs in six other states are patterned 
after the Montana Meth Project, launched in 2005 and hailed by White 
House drug czar John Walters a year later as "a model for prevention 
efforts nationwide."

Cindy Adams, executive director of the Hawaii Meth Project, says 
recent studies questioning the effectiveness of the Montana project 
and those that have followed are mistaken.

Those studies maintain that the decline in meth use stretches back a 
decade or more, rendering the recent projects as useless or close to it.

The rate of meth use among Montana high school students declined 
after the meth project was launched. However, accounting for the 
downward trend of meth use apparent at the end of the 1990s rendered 
the project's effect "small and statistically insignificant," 
reported Montana native D. Mark Anderson, Ph.D. candidate at the 
University of Washington, in a study published in the current Journal 
of Health Economics.

Much of American society was aware of the dangers of methamphetamine 
long before Montana and other states began their projects, Anderson 
said in an interview.

"This information was being disseminated and spread amongst social 
networks, peer groups, families, whatever, well before the national 
campaign took place," Anderson said. "If this campaign had come into 
place as soon as meth was introduced, maybe it would have had a more 
noticeable effect."

A 2006 federal law that required medicines containing 
pseudoephedrine, an ingredient in meth, to be moved behind a counter 
and limited a person's purchase of it is believed to have contributed 
to the decline in meth use. Also, a study published last month in the 
scientific journal Addiction showed that Mexico's recent efforts to 
control the manufacture of methamphetamine has resulted in a drop in 
meth treatment admissions in neighboring Texas. Most crystal meth 
available in Hawaii is believed to have been produced in Mexico and California.

Illustrating the issue, Anderson included a graphic showing that 
Montana's decline in meth use before and after its Meth Project was 
launched was similar to the declines in neighboring Wyoming, which 
launched its Meth Project in 2008, and North Dakota, which has no 
entity similar to the projects. Hawaii's trend, added to the graphic 
on this page, is similar leading up to its Meth Project launching 
last year after the survey was conducted.

Success or failure is measured by surveys of use by young people. 
Montana high school students admitting to at least one past meth use 
in their lives dropped from 8.3 percent in 2005 to 4.6 percent in 
2007, "an absolute drop of only 3.7 percent and a relative drop of 45 
percent (3.7 is 45 percent of 8.3)," Australian psychologist David 
Erceg-Hurn noted in the December 2008 journal Prevention Science. 
"However, it is the '45 percent' drop that is highlighted on the Meth 
Project website and in media releases."

In describing the pre-project problem on media releases and on its 
website, Hawaii Meth Project cited a 2007 biennial Youth Risk 
Behavior Survey showing that 7.3 percent of Hawaii high school 
sophomores admitted having used meth, "up 87 percent from 2005," 
indicating an absolute rise from 3 percent.

Adams maintains that "rates of decline" are more telling than 
"percentage point declines" when comparing survey numbers in state comparisons.

That 2007 survey result was the only one in the past decade 
indicating that admitted meth use among Hawaii high school youths 
increased from two years previously, from 4.3 percent to 4.5 percent, 
mainly because of the sophomores' responses. The survey indicates 
admitted previous meth use by 5.2 percent of freshmen, 1.1 percent of 
juniors and 3.2 percent of seniors.

Hawaii's 2009 survey result shows previous meth use by high school 
students declined to 3.9 percent. Individual class records indicating 
how the survey of the 2007 sophomores differed from the one taken in 
their senior year of 2009 were unavailable.

Ohta says the project's TV commercials are misleading. When viewers, 
especially young people, look at the commercials, they will say, "I 
know someone who uses meth, and they don't look like that," Ohta 
said. "So it loses credibility with a certain population of students."

The ads also portray meth addicts as being violent, losing their 
teeth or having skin problems, but those conditions are not always 
the case, Ohta said. "So what happens is that at school, teachers 
look at students and they say, 'My students don't look like that so 
we don't have a meth problem.'"

Adams said the conditions portrayed on the ads reflect the real 
effects of meth use.

"Not everybody is going to look like the meth addicts that we're 
showing in the ads," Adams said, "but I know meth addicts to look 
like that, and I've had people in recovery come up to me and tell me 
that is what they look like, or that is what their uncle looked like 
before he committed suicide, or that their daughter lost a tremendous 
amount of weight."

The Montana project was begun with private funds but in 2007 received 
$2 million from Montana's legislature and $1.5 million in federal 
funds. The Hawaii Meth Project operates on $1 million yearly in 
private donations.

Adams said the project is not "standing alone" but works with other 
programs aimed at preventing illicit drug use and with counselors and 
law enforcement agencies.

"Everybody is working very diligently," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart