06May
Image Ads
The New Zealand government is mulling a brilliant truth-in-advertising requirement. Its health minister has proposed that cigarette packs carry images of rotting teeth, throat cancers and other consequences of smoking. How about "drink responsibly" ads that show dead teens, or anti-drug advertising that capture someone getting tubes rammed down their throat in an emergency room?
Potent Message
Carrick has said that perhaps the most effective PSA about heroin would show what its use does to your complexion. I've seen some harrowing anti-meth PSAs that to do this effectively. Now there's a report that offers another powerful message. A headline in the Washington Post last Sunday read:
Cupid's Broken Arrow
Performance Anxiety and Substance Abuse Figure Into the Increase in Reports of Impotence on Campus
Peers Influence Peers
We've been working closely for a few months with Peers Influence Peers Partnership, a group based in Putnam Valley, N.Y., that creates powerful PSAs with a prevention or recovery message for young people. All of the writing, interviewing, camera work, acting, editing and behind-the-scences work is under the direction of high school and college students.
Every year, PIP produces an hour-long show that is broadcast to schools and rehabs around the country via satellite. Carrick was one of eight young people who told their story for this year's presentation, Road to Recovery. A story about the program ran on page 3 of today's Journal News, the daily newspaper in our home county of Westchester, N.Y. We are mentioned and quoted at the end of the piece.
If you'd like to obtain a SVHS, VHS, DVD, or Beta sp tape of Road to Recovery or any of the other PIP productions, email president Frank Reale.
White Plains Rally
Deirdre and I spoke at a rally for Timothy's Law in the Westchester Country seat of White Plains today. I was asked to MC the event this morning, and threw together some remarks that I'll recreate below. Deirdre edited down the comments she made to a New York State Senate committee in 2003, and was very effective. So were every one of the other speakers who, collectively, not only made the case for why parity legislation is cost effective (and the lack of it discriminatory), but also put a human face on mental illness and chemical dependancy. Even the politicians who spoke stayed on topic, were eloquent, and delivered a powerful message to their colleagues in the state Senate: If you don't pass this legislation, you are denying the will of your constituents — and eventually they will catch up with you.
Several TV stations from Westchester and New York City and WCBS, an all-news radio station, covered the event, which drew a couple of hundred people to the heart of downtown White Plains. The highlight of the noon rally was the appearance of Tom O'Clair. The legislation is named for Tom's son Timothy, who hung himself at age 12 after his family spent years trying to access adequate mental health services for their son.
Today would have been Timothy's 18th birthday.
Here are my remarks:
Timothy's Law would require that mental illnesses and chemical dependency disorders be covered under health insurance policies the same way that other physical illnesses is. The SAME WAY that any other physical illness is.
Timothy's Law passed the Assembly in March. This is the fourth year the Assembly has passed Timothy's Law. The Senate Bill (S 6735-a Duane) has not been allowed to the floor for a vote.
Senate leadership has introduced a so-called parity bill (S 1672-a Libous). This bill has a number of serious limitations that prevent the Timothy's Law Coalition from supporting it. It excludes employers of 50 or fewer, covers only a limited number of conditions, makes it virtually impossible for children to access treatment and doesn't cover chemical dependency.
My grandfather committed suicide.
My grandmother was institutionalized several times in her life for mental illness.
My mother was treated for depression on and off throughout her adult life.
On my father's side, I am at least the fourth generation of alcoholics, mostly recovered.
My wife is also in recovery and is alive today only because of the treatment she received for clinical depression.
My 21-year-old daughter is a recovering heroin addict and, thanks to methadone maintenance, has her life back and is attending college, which is why she can't be here today.
Our story is by no means unique. If fact, I don't think I'm sticking my neck out by claiming that there is not a single family in this state that has not been affected by substance abuse or mental illness.
We've talked to Republican senators, some of them well meaning; others not. They are, frankly, tools of the insurance industry's lobby.
Senators say that the advocates for Timothy's Law need to compromise.
Indeed, the Senate and Assembly must come together this year to pass a strong Timothy's Law BUT if there's one message we need to send to Albany this afternoon, it is this: We will not compromise with our loved one's lives.
And we need to tell those Senators who are not squarely behind Timothy's Law — a bill that includes coverage for small businesses and chemical dependency — that they will need to find new employment following the September elections.
Other speakers were:
Jean Anne Cipolla, a graduate student in health advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, who published an op-ed piece on Timothy's Law in the Journal News last Sunday.
Ellen Morehouse, executive director of Student Assistance Services in Westchester County.
Dally Sanchez, mental health systems advocate with Westchester Independent Living Center.
Charlene and Eva Dech. Charlene has been involved with family support and advocating for her daughter, Eva, since the 1980s. Today, they advocate together.
Bill Ryan, chair of the Westchester County Board of Legislators.
Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, chair of the Assembly Task Force for People with Disabilities.
Assemblyman Adam Bradley.
Assemblyman George Latimer.
George Hockley, member of the White Plains Common Council.
Dr. Ray Griffin, president of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence/Westchester.
If you live in New York State, please educate your neighbors about Timothy's Law, and let your state senator know that an unadulterated Timothy's Law needs to be passed NOW.
Other mentions of Timothy's Law on this site:
Beer Blasted
After an inspiring three-year battle with pancreatic cancer, a friend of mine is gravely ill. Unable to do much except watch TV, Mitch followed the recent NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament with great interest. During a commercial break in one of the games, he turned to his wife, Sue, and said: "I want two things. One, to get better. Two, to have a beer."
He had just seen a beer commercial.
If he is able to have a beer one of these days — he's having a hard time processing plain water — it would probably be the first one Mitch has had since he was in the Army 35 years ago. It's obviously not the alcohol he craves, Sue says. It's the lifestyle that beer commercials promise. Mitch is a highly intelligent man who prides himself on his resistence to the Siren call of our consumer culture. Under normal circumstances, he'd no more fall prey to an alcohol advertisment than belly up to the bar and order a boilermaker. But alcohol ads aren't selling the buzz, they're selling the steak: good times, good friends, good health, good sex.
I was reminded of this when I read about a new study that analyzes different published data sets and concluded that between 37.5% and 48.8% of the industry's sales are to illegal underage drinkers or to adults who abuse or are dependent on alcohol. The combined value in dollars to the industry is between $48.3 billion and $62.9 billion in sales, according to the study published in the May 2006 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. It found that underage drinkers accounted for at least 17.5% of total consumer expenditures for alcohol in 2001.
"The alcohol industry has a compelling financial motive to attempt to maintain or increase rates of underage drinking," the authors, who are affiliated with the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), write. "Alcohol advertisements in magazines, for example, expose youth aged 12 to 20 years to 45% more beer advertisements and 27% more advertisements for distilled spirits than adults of legal drinking age. The same pattern of overexposure of children relative to adults with advertisements for beer and distilled spirits also can be seen in radio and television advertising. Furthermore, exposure of children and teens to magazine and television alcohol advertisements has increased, even more so for girls than boys, despite national reports calling for limits on advertising by the alcohol industry to children and teens younger than 21 years."
CASA president and CEO Joseph A. Califano, Jr., is calling for the federal government to take a more active role in regulating alcohol advertising.
"Self-regulation by the alcohol industry is a delusion that ensnares too many children and teens," he says.
The beer industry responds that underage drinking is at a "record low" and says that it spends $50 million a year in "responsibility" PSAs annually.
All I know is if a beer ad makes Mitch want to have a drink, teens haven't got a chance to resist the false promise of good times, good friends, good health, good sex.
Carrick's Blog
A link to Carrick's blog went live on the Silent Treatment: Addiction in America site this morning. (It's in the top left corner.) She will be posting at least twice a week for the next couple of months. Her first entry begins:
I suppose my story isn’t typical — every time I visited my parents someone would take out the video camera. I could never be too sure whether they were trying to get footage for this show that I had expressed little interest in or if they were just afraid the next time they would see me it would be in a coroner’s office and they wanted to record every moment they could. Maybe both.
If that's not enough to entice you to the site for the rest of the story about Carrick's journey from addict to advocate, I don't know what is.
On Friday, I finished the last of three first-person stories I've written for the initial installment of a five-part "Silent Treatment" series that will be available free to newspaper editors across the country, via the Kinght Ridder/Tribune News Service, beginning August 2. For that matter, the series is free to anyone who wishes to spread the word.
Despite initial appearances, Carrick and I are just a small part of an impressive package. Stories for the other four days of the series have been written by several distinguished journalists and the site will feature additional bloggers, a discussion area, a feedback section (already live), links and many other resources.