Don’t Walk Away and Leave a Friend to DIE Campaign Wins Award
It’s a great campaign with a great name: Don’t Walk Away and Leave a Friend to DIE—and it won top prize at the Health Business Awards 2007 for its creator, UNISON member Steve Evans, a North West Ambulance paramedic.
A grassroots effort, Evans’ campaign beat out far larger campaigns with a similar anti-drug message with running costs of about $2 million a week. The point of Evans’ campaign is to remind kids that they should watch out for each other if one or more in the group starts drinking or using drugs. Worried about getting in trouble themselves, high school and college age kids alike are prone to ditch their friends when they are sick or overdosed. In many cases, this leads to unnecessary fatalities when a quick trip to the hospital could have righted the situation.
The Health Business Awards 2007 judges were duly impressed by Evans’ campaign, saying that he “has achieved an immense amount of publicity, including coverage on local and National television on an extremely limited budget. For his monumental efforts to raise awareness of a life saving issue Steve has been awarded the first NHS Publicity Campaign Award.”
Though Steve’s campaign is aimed at drinking in particular, his is a solid message for kids and adults who find themselves in situations where people around them are using drugs. It’s not just kids who are worried about getting in trouble when illegal drugs are in use, and prescription drugs when use by those without a prescription or in excess of a prescription are illegal especially when use in combination with other drugs. In many cases, overdose victims are left alone in public places with the hope that “someone” will find them and call an ambulance. The result is often devastating.
If you find yourself in a situation this holiday season where people are using drugs or mixing prescription painkillers with alcohol, make sure that they have someone to drive them home, and if you live in snowy areas, be sure that no one wanders off from the group and gets lost in the freezing temperatures. If this overuse of prescription painkillers is an ongoing problem for you or someone you love, perhaps when the holidays have passed it will be time to consider a Suboxone detox or a Suboxone opiate drug addiction treatment so that next year you and yours will be able to celebrate drug-free.
For more information about the Evans’ campaign or his award, head over to the Unison website.
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