State Launches Awareness Effort Against Meth

Gas pumps in Tennessee will soon feature ads with the slogan “new law, no escape” as part of a statewide campaign against meth. The federally-funded awareness effort will also include billboards, a website, bumper stickers and radio.

This ad targets so-called “smurfs,” who gather the cold medicine dealers use to make meth:

“Guess what happens when you try to buy a lot of pseudoephedrine. A statewide tracking system will block the purchase and alert the police.”
(knocking) “Police! Open up!”
“Because in Tennessee, there are strict limits on how much pseudoephedrine you can buy.”

Asked whether such awareness campaigns actually work, State Safety Commissioner Bill Gibbons conceded it’s hard to reason with people in the throes of addiction. But he pointed to a similar effort against meth a few years ago, under the Bredesen administration. Gibbons said that campaign had a “direct correlation” with a reduction in homemade meth.

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Governor Bill Haslam wants to include $750 thousand in the state budget to train police who clean up meth labs, which are full of dangerous chemicals. That money went unused last year because the state required local governments to pay matching dollars. Now Haslam wants to scrap that requirement.