Campaign against recreational cocaine use deemed a success.

The campaign achieved its primary objective of ‘dispelling the myths that recreational cocaine use is far from harmless’, according to Joe Doyle, Senior Rehabilitation Co-ordinator with the HSE.

“A post-campaign online study among recreational users and an omnibus study demonstrated huge attitudinal and behavioural change with our audience,” he stated in a reply to a parliamentary question by Deputy Jack Wall, Labour’s spokesperson on Community and Rural Affairs.

“Our target audience had been educated about the risks and were starting to think differently about the dangers of the drug,” he added.

Advertising recall was high with half hearing the radio ads and one in three surveyed seeing the posters. Some 73 per cent of under-35s said the poster ads would make them think differently about using cocaine, while 93 per cent said the radio ads contained new information about the dangers of mixing cocaine and alcohol.

Source: Dara Gantly, Irish Medical Times, January 2009