Heroin Community Awareness Campaign

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

In the past few years, Anoka County, MN has experienced a dramatic increase in heroin use and deaths, as well as a deadly increase in the potency of the heroin being found on our streets. Within the past year, we are finding the heroin purity up to 93% pure – deadly enough to kill someone with just one dose. Heroin is readily available in our suburban community, sold cheaply, and offering a similar high to prescription opiates that are addicting many in our communities. Law enforcement, prosecution, corrections, and treatment programs have individually increased their efforts to address the heroin epidemic in many ways. However, after a rash of deaths, victim families, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, Anoka County Attorney’s Office, Anoka County, and MN Adult & Teen Challenge came together to develop a community awareness campaign that resulted in a series of well-received community forums that reached 800 people, a toolkit for other communities to replicate the program, promotion of our prescription drug take-back locations, online resources and heightened community awareness of the dangers and realities of heroin and opiates in Anoka County. The unique aspects of this campaign are that it was victim-driven, collaboratively managed with county, included nonprofit and victim input, and was delivered in a short amount of time. It also created substantial media attention, which helped further a larger conversation with the Twin Cities metro area about heroin. It cost very little money, is replicable and has played a role in driving the conversation about what we believe is a national epidemic.