Don’t Let Meth Take Hold: Evaluation of a Methamphetamine Prevention Campaign

This research report is developed by the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) at Flinders University, for Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia (DASSA), SA Health and other stakeholders. This research seeks to evaluate a campaign for preventing and reducing methamphetamine use, which aims to communicate recent research evidence about the long-term effects of methamphetamine on human movement. The campaign, “Don’t let meth take hold”, comprises video and out-of-home advertisement materials. The overarching aim of this research project is to assess the reach, frequency and effectiveness of the campaign. The secondary objectives of this evaluation are to collect the levels of usage and intentions to try/continue using methamphetamine, and the knowledge of negative effects of methamphetamine use at a population level, to compare with baseline data collected prelaunch in 2019. This data is provided for context only – it is not possible to determine causality between a campaign of such modest size and duration and population-level methamphetamine usage trends, which are influenced by a range of other factors, including drug supply (which has remained steady in South Australia over the past several years (Karlsson, Peacock, & Sutherland, 2022), decreasing trends in social wellbeing of South Australians (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2021) and other factors.