Kentucky Attorney General Coleman to launch $3.6 million youth drug prevention initiative
By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
Kentucky’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission voted to fund a $3.6 million youth drug prevention initiative proposed by Attorney General Russell Coleman at the commission’s Sept. 10 meeting. The money would be split over two years.
Coleman told the commission that a “gold standard statewide prevention effort” was needed to close “the gaping hole in our efforts to fight the drug threat here in Kentucky.”
“With over one million Kentuckians under the age of 18, . . . I am committed to putting every dollar of this to good use and saving lives,” he said. “Our parents and grandparents schooled us that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I fully believe this initiative lives up to that age-old wisdom.”
The money for the initiative was approved unanimously by the commission, which was created by the legislature in 2021 to distribute the state’s portion of the $900 million in settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors. Half of the money goes to the state and the other half to local governments.
The settlement money is provided in installments and so far, the state has awarded 110 grants worth more than $55 million for treatment, prevention and recovery.
Calling the initiative a “three-legged stool,” Coleman told the commission that the first leg would involve an advertising campaign modeled after a Florida initiative called “Better Without It,” but tailored for Kentucky. The principle of this program is based on positive youth development, focusing on competence, confidence, connection, character and compassion, dubbed the “five Cs.”
The ad campaign would target Kentuckians between the ages of 13 and 26 and be shared on social media and streaming platforms, on college campuses and through partnerships with influencers.
“Every part of it will look and sound like Kentucky,” he said.
The second leg would promote school-based programs that Coleman said currently exist as a “patchwork” across the state. “Our team will help weave together this patchwork,” he said.
The third leg would “elevate and draw attention to the ongoing work of this commission and our partners in youth prevention,” he said.
Even though Kentucky saw a 9.8% decrease in overdose deaths in 2023 compared to 2022, the state still lost 1,984 people to overdose deaths last year, with about 79%, or 1,570, of those deaths involving fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.
“We live at a time, as you know, where as little as one fentanyl pill can and is killing our neighbors. We live at a time where there is no margin of error. It simply does not exist, where there’s no such thing as safe, no such concept or notion of safe experimentation with narcotics,” he said. “Kentucky needs a youth-focused effort that will keep our sons and daughters away from this poison in the first place.”
Kentucky Health News is an independent news service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.
