RIA Rough Draft

The purpose of my campaign is to bring awareness to how drug addiction affects family and friends not just the addict, along with the stereotype that drug addiction is a choice rather than a disease. I hope to reach out to those who truly don’t understand the affect that drug addiction has on families/friends, mainly middle aged adults and the elderly because this audience is key in addressing the problem with drug addiction because they are the ones who help make decisions on how to deal with drug addiction and how to address it to the media. My intended audience is for those that assume that drug addiction is the choice of the addict rather than a disease, and those that assume that it doesn’t affect the addict’s friends and family.

The conversation about my cultural problem is people claiming that addiction affects the family in a negative way, and the friends/family have to deal with anxiety, emotional pain, stress, and loss of trust. Another conversation that comes up about drug addiction is that it is either a disease or choice, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse most doctors believe that drug addiction is “long-lasting condition that can be controlled but not cured”, meaning that it is a disease not a choice! And the biggest issue that comes with drug addiction according to Walters is whether or not naloxone is an enabler because people are being revived after overdosing and still continuing to use because they know that naloxone will save them.

The forms of media that I will use to create my campaign will be Facebook and YouTube because they are the easiest to upload a video onto and gain an audience because you can quickly share with others, I may also post my video to Twitter. I chose this type of media because I think it is one of the biggest forms of media in today’s society, a lot of people take the time to go onto YouTube or Facebook to watch videos about what’s going on in today’s society rather than reading an article online. I believe that the audience will respond quicker to a video rather than an article because they will be intrigued to see what the video is about and actually watch it to the end, rather than skimming through an article.

My plan for circulating the media will be to share it on my personal Facebook page because personally my family has struggled with someone who dealt with and still deals with addiction; I believe that because the video affects them personally they will be more likely to share it with their friends. When they share the video onto their page they may also have friends who are affected by a family member who is struggling with addiction and it would just continue to spread in that way. I believe that this strategy is affective because like I stated earlier a lot of people are more likely to watch a video through to the end then to read an article through to the end because the video they have to actually watch it to obtain the information and an article they could skim through to obtain the information.

Works Cited

The Effect Of Addiction On The Family. Retrieved from Drug Rehab: http://www.drugrehab.org/effect-of-addiction-family/

The National Center On Addiction and Substance Abuse. (2017, April 14). Addiction As A Disease. Retrieved from Center on Addiction: https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease

Walters, M. (2016, August 29). Police save lives using naloxone, but worry about enabling. Retrieved from Transforming Health: http://www.transforminghealth.org/stories/2016/08/police-save-lives-using-naloxone-but-worry-about-enabling.php