Blitz­ing the air­waves: PSA cam­paign on coun­ter­feit goods shifts vision in age of fen­tanyl

A pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign aimed at teach­ing teenagers about the dan­gers of buy­ing knock­off items online piv­ot­ed from its orig­i­nal intent to blitz the air­waves about the dan­gers of coun­ter­feit fen­tanyl, now the top killer of young adults in the coun­try.
The Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office and the non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion the Nation­al Crime Pre­ven­tion Coun­cil launched the “Go For Real” cam­paign in 2019 to inform chil­dren and teenagers to look out for and avoid fake ver­sions of design­er hand­bags, pro­fes­sion­al sports gear, and the like.
But sev­er­al years into that cam­paign, the gov­ern­ment and non­prof­it offi­cials run­ning the effort have cho­sen to shift mes­sag­ing to focus increas­ing­ly on pills that can kill, includ­ing fen­tanyl.

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NCPC Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Paul DelPonte said he began hear­ing from par­ents three years ago about deaths of chil­dren to the drug, which led him to real­ize the …