DEA Hosts E-Sports Tournaments to Raise Fentanyl Awareness
America is in the midst of a deadly opioid epidemic. The national rate of teenagers overdosing has tripled in the past two years. There is a need to reach this target audience with educational and awareness information particularly around the lethal dangers of illicit fentanyl. Doing so in an impactful way can be challenging as teens today are entrenched in a digital world. To meet that challenge, the Drug Enforcement Administration has taken the information battle directly to their digital world.
97% of American youth, ages 12-17, play video games. Leveraging this popularity by way of esports provides a unique mechanism to deliver DEA’s life-saving message of “One Pill Can Kill” to this hard-to-reach demographic. To best do so, a methodology has been carefully crafted that effectively uses the esports platform, gaming influencers, announcers, color commentators, and pre-produced targeted video content to convey this important information.