PRLN1010: Fentanyl Awareness Campaign for Ontario's Youth

This project outlines a public awareness campaign in Ontario to combat the increasing number of deaths caused by fentanyl, a potent opioid. The campaign aims to educate recreational drug users about the dangers of fentanyl being mixed with other drugs and to reduce the sales of fentanyl-laced products. The project includes a situation analysis, public survey questions, PR objectives, stakeholder analysis (policy makers, patients, doctors, and providers), key messages, tactics (including a three-year project, website with video anecdotes, and news releases), a timeline, and an evaluation plan using surveys and media monitoring. The ultimate goal is to increase awareness, change attitudes, and reduce fentanyl-related deaths in Ontario.

Running head: CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
Creating Awareness about Dangers of Fentanyl
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
There is an increasing number of deaths caused by Fentanyl in Ontario and the
government of Ontario (Ministry of Health) is concerned about this. The drug (Fentanyl) is a
highly potent opioid and doctors usually prescribe them to help the patients who are suffering
from some severe chronic pain. Although it indeed helps in getting treated but the real
concern lie over the recreational drug users. These recreational drug users are unaware of the
fact that Fentanyl can be combined with other recreational drugs that they use. As per several
health experts like (), Fentanyl is eighty times as powerful as morphine (a narcotic drug that
is obtained from opium) and is hundred times more powerful than heroin.
There is rising concern about this issue and media coverage about this has been very
extensive. There are some experts who are claiming that the increasing use of Fentanyl in the
recreational drugs is an epidemic. In the year 2016, the Police Chiefs in Ontario have also
banded together for launching an awareness campaign and had target the youth in order to let
them aware of the dangers of Fentanyl.
Business Objective
The main objectives of the Ontario Government are as follows:
a) To increase the total number of audience becoming aware of the disadvantages of
Fentanyl by 70% by the end of the campaign
b) To decrease the sales of Fentanyl added products by 25%
c) To restore the global reputation of Ontario government as people concerned
government through superior performance
d) To exceed the expectations of the drugs users and stakeholders by 10%
e) To increase the awareness of the recreational drug users about chances of Fentanyl
being mixed with the other recreational drugs and the harms it might cause.

2CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
Situation Analysis
Some medical professionals who are working in the field claims that if they speak
about the fentanyl crisis in more clinical and straightforward way, they can see if for what it
is- a public health issue, which can be easily addressed by means of medical system. Fentanyl
is widely considered as a powerful synthetic opioid which is quite similar to morphine and
even fifty to hundred time more potent than it. It is a prescription drug and is also used
illegally in many parts of the world. Fentanyl is prescribed by the doctors to treat the patients
who suffer from severe pain, particularly during their post-surgery (Dowell, Noonan &
Houry, 2017). Many of the times, it is also used for treating patients suffering from chronic
pain and the ones who are physically tolerant to opioids. When prescribed by doctors, it is
usually named as “Actiq®, Sublimaze®, and Duragesic®. However, it is to note that the
synthetic opioids, comprising of Fentanyl are at present very common drugs that are involved
in the drug overdose deaths in Ontario.
In the year 2017, the black-market forms of the strong Fentanyl were responsible for
about 80% of the death in Ontario. Also, about half of the total people died in Ontario
because of the accidental opioid related caused were taking those drugs from about five long
years. In the year 2016, the total number of deaths due to this reason was 867, which rose to
1263 in 2017 (Tadrous et al., 2019). Moreover, as per the report by the Federal Government,
“in 2017, 72 per cent of accidental opioid-related deaths in the country involved prescription
or illicit fentanyl, compared with 55 per cent in 2016” (Fischer et al., 2018).
Public Survey Questions
1. What is your name?
2. What is your age?
3. What is your gender?
4. What is the name of the province you live in?

3CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
5. What is the name of the city you live in?
6. Are you aware of the use of Fentanyl?
7. Do you know what benefits and dangers it possess?
8. To what extent you believe Fentanyl is advantageous for your health?
9. If you were to be the patient and your doctor has prescribed Fentanyl for your
recovery, would you have taken it?
10. Are you aware of the fact that fentanyl is 80 times as powerful as morphine?
11. Are you aware of the fact that fentanyl is hundreds of times more powerful than heroin?
PR Objectives
The target audience of our campaign is the youth population of Ontario. The
Government of Manitoba has already launched an awareness campaign but now it is seeking for
creating public awareness regarding the dangers that fentanyl possess. As per Gomes et al. (2018),
about 73% of the total population are unaware of the negative effects of fentanyl and they keep on
consuming it in order to decrease their pains. The drug is a highly potent opioid and doctors
usually prescribe them to help the patients who are suffering from some severe chronic pain.
Although it indeed helps in getting treated but the real concern lie over the recreational drug
users. These recreational drug users are unaware of the fact that Fentanyl can be combined
with other recreational drugs that they use.
Stakeholder Analysis
Our key stakeholders that we need to connect with for successfully achieving the PR
objectives are: the policy makers, patients, doctors and providers. There are several
psychological, physical, and social factors, which results in drug abuse issues. Psychological
and emotional factors may include depression and schizophrenia, and they all are linked to
the growth and development of drug abuse issues. With the same, the physical challenges like
the chronic pain or the improper or undertreated pain, may also result in drug abuse. With the

4CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
same, the social factors like stress, high unemployment, poverty, and education, could also
result in drug abuse. The education of the physicians and patients, the use of prescription-
monitoring programs, the checking of photo identification during the sale of the product, the
referral to pain specialists as well as the use of abuse-deterrent opioid formulations are some
of the highly effective and legitimate strategies that can be used for preventing such issues
and these should be used by healthcare stakeholders, like the payers and providers.
Effectively treating depression, chronic pain and schizophrenia is critical than changing the
formation of any opioid if in case the goal is – preventing the opioid misuse or abuse.
Promoting and improving the quality of education as well as the financial future of the nation
very important than checking photo identification at the point of sale if we want to prevent
drug diversion.
When prescribed by any doctor, fentanyl can be given as a shot that is put on the
patient’s skin, or as lozenges which are sucked. The illegally used fentanyl most often
associated with recent overdoses is made in labs. This synthetic fentanyl is sold illegally as a
powder, dropped onto blotter paper, put in eye droppers and nasal sprays, or made into pills
that look like other prescription opioids. Also, there are several drug dealers who are mixing
fentanyl with the other recreational drugs or strong ones like heroin, cocaine,
methamphetamine, and MDMA (Gomes et al., 2017). They do so because of the fact that it
takes very little to produce a high with fentanyl and also, it is a cheaper option as well.
However, it is especially more risky when people who are taking these drugs don’t realize
that those drugs might contain fentanyl as a cheap but dangerous additive. Also, they might
be taking stronger opioids as compared to their bodies are habituated with and there can be
high chances of overdose.

5CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
Key Messages
a) One of our key message will use the tagline of “Read your prescription” in order to
make people concerned about what the doctors are prescribing to them. It is not that
doctors are our enemy but the thing is people should be knowing what they are
consuming and what will be its consequences. There are several other pain killers that
man can use in order to get relieved of their serious pains.
b) Our next key message is for the young generation to know what they are consuming.
In Ontario, about 39% youths use one or the other drugs and the very common of
them are the recreational drugs. Fentanyl is used in many of the recreational drugs
that the youths are unaware about.
c) Fentanyl will make you thousands of steps closer to death. We shall be reaching about
80% of the youths of Ontario ranging between age range of 12 to 25 years who
support use of recreational drugs and we will speak to them directly.
Tactics
In order to capture the hearts and minds of our customers and audience, we would be
using some PR tactics. Firstly, we would be introducing a three year project. It would be
funded by the government of Ontario and would be projected for preventing the misuse or
abuse of the prescription drugs among the young generation, particularly between the age
ranges of thirteen to twenty five years. We will begin a campaign called “PREVENT
YOURSELF FROM UNKNOWN USE OF DRUG”. This campaign will be tailored towards
preventing the selling and purchasing of Fentanyl used medicines. Secondly, we shall also be
launching our websites with video anecdotes in order to let the online viewers become aware
of the campaigns and the happenings. It shall be updating them about the concerns. Thirdly,
we would be submitting News Release to the Newspapers. It would be written as per the CP

6CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
style guidelines. We will also spread it by means of Radio in order to make the older
generation who still listen to Radio, become aware.
Time line
Survey Website News
Release
Social
Media
Campaign
National
Event
Evaluation
April 2019 April 2019 May 2019 May 2019 August 5,
2019
August 2019
Evaluation
Surveys
We shall be using surveys for evaluating our PR activities. It is to note that Surveys
would gauge the attitudes and awareness of our target audience of our PR campaign. We shall
be conducting a survey after our campaign in order to establish the prevailing attitudes and
perceptions towards the Ontario Government and the campaign. Post campaign survey shall
be measuring how successful our campaign was.
Media Monitoring
Media Monitoring is an effective technique that we would be using to measure the
total number of times our PR campaign message is covered in both the broadcast media and
print media. We shall be gauging if our PR message has reached our target audience and this
is achievable by evaluating the target audience of the media where our message shall appear.
Through this we would also come to know the actual number of readers and viewers of our
message.

7CREATING AWARENESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FENTANYL
References:
Dowell, D., Noonan, R. K., & Houry, D. (2017). Underlying factors in drug overdose
deaths. Jama, 318(23), 2295-2296.
Fischer, B., Jones, W., Varatharajan, T., Malta, M., & Kurdyak, P. (2018). Correlations
between population-levels of prescription opioid dispensing and related deaths in
Ontario (Canada), 2005–2016. Preventive medicine, 116, 112-118.
Gomes, T., Juurlink, D. N., Mamdani, M. M., Paterson, J. M., & van den Brink, W. (2017).
Prevalence and characteristics of opioid-related deaths involving alcohol in Ontario,
Canada. Drug and alcohol dependence, 179, 416-423.
Gomes, T., Khuu, W., Martins, D., Tadrous, M., Mamdani, M. M., Paterson, J. M., &
Juurlink, D. N. (2018). Contributions of prescribed and non-prescribed opioids to
opioid related deaths: population based cohort study in Ontario, Canada. bmj, 362,
k3207.
Tadrous, M., Greaves, S., Martins, D., Nadeem, K., Singh, S., Mamdani, M. M., ... & Gomes,
T. (2019). Evaluation of the fentanyl patch-for-patch program in Ontario,
Canada. International Journal of Drug Policy, 66, 82-86.