State launches anti-meth drive

Scottsdale middle school students will get a sneak peek at a statewide anti-methamphetamine campaign Tuesday designed to scare them straight.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Don Stapley, R-District 2 of Mesa, Gilbert and Scottsdale, will be at Cocopah Middle School to unveil the Arizona Meth Project advertisements the day before the campaign’s official launch on Wednesday. They’ll also talk to about 30 students about the drug.

Arizona’s campaign is patterned after the Montana Meth Project launched in September 2005. Arizona will use the same television ads aired in Montana, which feature dramatizations of meth’s effects, said Linda Mushkatel, special projects manager for Maricopa County.

The campaign features several ads including a young girl in a hospital emergency room and other spots showing users with open sores on their mouths or teeth.

“They’re gritty. They’re not pleasant to watch,” said Andrea Esquer, spokeswoman for Goddard’s office. “There was some forethought. How do you get these kids’ attention to get them to understand what using meth even once will do?”

Arizona print ads, billboards and a Web site also will be similar to the Montana products, seen at www.montanameth.org, Mushkatel said.

There also will be a series of radio commercials — some in English, some in Spanish — that will feature real Arizona youths sharing their experiences with meth.

The Montana campaign first caught Goddard’s attention in February 2006, when that state’s attorney general spoke at an Arizona meth conference, Esquer said. This campaign is impressive because it included a baseline survey to determine what kids knew about meth and whether the ads were effective over time, Esquer said.

Cocopah was picked to unveil the campaign because it’s a typical school, representative that meth use happens everywhere, Mushkatel said.

“When we talk about drug use, there’s some thought that it only happens in certain parts of the city,” Mushkatel said.

She pointed to the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission’s 2006 Arizona Youth Survey to show that theory isn’t true. According to those numbers, 4.3 percent of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders have tried meth.

There were 1,412 meth production-related raids across the state between 2000 and 2005, figures from the attorney general’s office show.