WIDAC - Council Meeting
(July 13, 2023)

Here are some observations from the Thursday July 13th Washington Impaired Driving Advisory Council (WIDAC) Council Meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

• WTSC is one of the government organizations funding the Most Steer Clear Positive Community Norms (PCN) campaign, which encouraged Seattle area youth to avoid cannabis use and impaired driving.
  • WTSC is Washington State’s designated highway safety office. Though Commissioners elect a chair, the group is officially chaired by Washington Governor Jay Inslee who appoints a designee to attend meetings. Among its functions, the commission oversees WIDAC which convenes agencies and organizations working to reduce impaired driving and assists with organizing their work.
    • During the previous council meeting on April 13th, members heard about  Re-Evaluating The Prevalence of Poly-Drug-Positive Driving in Washington from WTSC Research and Data Division Research Associate Max Roberts.
  • Established in 2017, the Most Steer Clear program was said to center on helping “keep young adults in King County safe and healthy.” The name reflected a statistic offered that “Most (68%) young adults in King County don’t use marijuana regularly and most (89%) don’t drive under the influence of marijuana.”
    • The educational effort involved videos and other resources which were advertised in public spaces and before movies, or promoted to youth online. A WTSC 2019 annual report stated “After two years of the campaign, Seattle-area young people reported 5 percent less cannabis product use than the state as a whole.” It went on to note “King County high school seniors participating in the Washington Healthy Youth Survey [HYS] reported 5 percent less current marijuana usage than the state as a whole. In that same survey, King County 12th graders reported a 5 percent lower rate of driving after consuming marijuana than the state as a whole. These are the first decreases in these percentages since the passage of Initiative 502 [I-502] in 2012 that legalized recreational marijuana use for persons 21 years and older.”
    • The Washington State Health Care Authority (WA HCA) sponsored Athena Forum included Most Steer Clear materials in an August 2020 presentation on the campaign (video).
    • A 2022 Traffic Safety Plan from WTSC mentioned additional funding to “expand on the current website, posters, and social media ads to grow the reach through King County, adding short videos on social media and utilizing Peer Health Educators on and off college campuses to reach 200,000 young adults, particularly youth of color and immigrant youth.”
  • Besides WTSC, identified partners and funders for the campaign were:
    • Neighborhood House
      • Leading the program, the organization was identified in the annual report as a “sub-recipient” where staff designed the campaign. A 2019 blog post from the organization credited Community Health Manager Mike Graham-Squire as one of the leads in crafting the effort.
    • Mercer Island Healthy Youth Initiative
    • SE Seattle PEACE Coalition
    • SW Seattle Youth Alliance
    • King County Department of Community and Human Services
    • U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
    • WA HCA
  • Jason Kilmer, a University of Washington (UW) researcher, mentioned Graham-Squire and the campaign to Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) members during a HYS presentation in July 2022.
  • The Most Steer Clear campaign has maintained use of the term ‘marijuana,’ even as most Washington State agencies changed to using the term ‘cannabis,’ in accordance with a 2022 law, HB 1210. The "Marijuana Can't, You Can" PCN campaign by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) acknowledges "The term ‘marijuana’ has a racist history in the United States that targeted communities of color," but maintains ambivalence about any difference in usage of terminology.

• Neighborhood House Drug Free Communities Program Manager and Washington Association for Substance Misuse and Violence Prevention (WASAVP) Co-Vice President Mike Graham-Squire led a presentation on the campaign, claiming credit for reducing cannabis use in the region.
  • Working for Neighborhood House since 2010, Graham-Squire had been focused on youth cannabis prevention, attending or making remarks—typically as a member of WASAVP—to regulators and lawmakers at events including:
    • A 2020 webinar by the Northwest Prevention Technology Transfer Center titled: The More the Merrier? THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] Potency in the Legalization Era
    • During the 2021 legislative session, Graham-Squire signed in opposed to HB 1019 (“Allowing residential marijuana agriculture”) and supporting HB 1463 (“Addressing serious mental health consequences of high-potency cannabis products by regulating the sale of cannabis concentrates”). He also joined a WSLCB planning team for an agency prevention roundtable that summer.
    • At time of publication, his last lobbying in the Washington State Legislature was during the the 2022 session, when he registered positions on several cannabis bills, opposing:
      • HB 1855 - "Concerning a craft cannabis endorsement"
      • SB 5767 - “Regulating hemp-derived cannabinoids” 
      • SB 5951 - "Concerning agricultural hemp products to ensure the safe implementation of Washington state's industrial hemp program"
    • Graham-Squire indicated support for the following measures in 2022:
      • HB 1668 - “Expanding regulatory authority over cannabinoids that may be impairing and providing for enhanced product safety and consumer information disclosure about marijuana products”
      • HB 2035 - "Establishing a behavioral health prevention and equity impact framework for the Washington state liquor and cannabis board" 
      • SB 5547 - “Expanding regulatory authority over cannabinoids that may be impairing and providing for enhanced product safety and consumer information disclosure about marijuana products”
      • SB 5983 - "Concerning untested and unregulated cannabinoid products" 
  • WTSC Program Manager Anthony Bledsoe introduced Graham-Squire and Neighborhood House Epidemiologist Melissa Resendiz Rivas, describing how they would speak to the Most Steer Clear program, which had been funded by the commission for the previous three years. Bledsoe elaborated that the program “this last year expanded to Pierce and Snohomish Counties,” and staff were “looking to continue that, both the original King County work, as well as the expansion work going on into 2024” (audio - 3m).
  • Graham-Squire explained how the campaign was developed after passage of I-502, and “like many of you…we were concerned that there would be an increase in impaired driving due to the increased availability of marijuana, and promotion of marijuana” (audio - 10m).
    • The initial data for Most Steer Clear came from the 2016 HYS (factsheet) and the 2017 Washington State Young Adult Health Survey (factsheet), Graham-Squire told the group. “We saw that 26% of 12th graders were using marijuana in the past 30 days in King County, and we were able…to reduce that down to 18% in 2021,” he asserted, “hopefully in part due to this campaign.” Graham-Squire then said “about 16% of 12th graders in 2016 reported driving within three hours of marijuana use, and that reduced down to 6.1% in 2021.” He then referred to the young adult survey and claimed since 2017 “there wasn't much change in [cannabis use] in King County in 2021, but [in] the rest of the state marijuana use for young adults increased two or three percent, so we were able to…maintain while the rest of the state had some increase.” He claimed that Most Steer Clear was also the reason “14% of young adults in 2017 reported driving after marijuana use, and we brought that down to 12.7% in 2021,” as well as for decreases in 12th graders reporting riding with a “marijuana using driver.” These trends led him to feel the campaign had impacted behaviors in the target demographics by addressing a “misperception of youth or young adults, where they think that almost everyone is using marijuana or other drugs, and the fact is that most are not.”
      • Learn more from a WSLCB staff presentation of the most recent HYS in May 2022, and of young adult survey data in July 2022.
      • See previous cannabis use data for other grades in King County from the same period, as well as survey trends in counties without the campaign using the HYS data dashboard.
    • After referencing data from Kilmer showing that while a majority of young adults didn’t consume cannabis, Graham-Squire acknowledged, “almost nobody thinks that people are never using it…that perception is something that we've been working on and that's been a very persistent perception over the years.” He reiterated how Most Steer Clear emphasized two key points: most teens and young adults didn’t consume cannabis, and if they did consume, most wouldn’t drive “after marijuana or alcohol use.” Graham-Squire then reviewed materials they’d made during the project:
      • “A website and social media, we try to post things around holidays and times of high use”
      • “We've had ads on light rail and buses [in the] Seattle area,” along with billboards that had run “in all three counties. These went up right before the July 4th weekend, so we got the graduation season…and they're up for another week or so”
      • “We also recently had a full page color ad in the UW Daily newspaper, in their graduation edition” which included “a little bit more information,” plus the “UW Daily for entering students, this gets mailed out to all incoming freshmen and their families”
      • A “pocket flier” containing “all the information from our website in a small brochure. We've done sticker sheets to hand out for people to put on their water bottles, and phones, and laptops”
      • “We have short, 30 second, and 15 second videos…and we've been most successful with those at showing them at movie theaters,” sharing that “we had a three weekend run in…all the major theaters in King, Snohomish, and Pierce Counties, and we just got the report for that, and the reach was over a million individuals seeing that”
      • “Audio ads, we worked with some students” in a UW public health class, “and they created a couple of scripts for audio ads that ran on radio up in Snohomish County, as well as we've had audio ads run on Spotify, which we know is popular for the young adult audience”
  • Graham-Squire thanked WTSC for the financial support for the campaign, remarking “one of the things with a lot of prevention campaigns is they don't have enough funding to actually get the ‘dose’ out to folks” repeatedly.

• Council members had questions and remarks about the Most Steer Clear program, but all were supportive of the results highlighted by Graham-Squire and backed expansions of the campaign.
  • Linda Thompson, Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council (GSSAC) Executive Director and WASAVP Board Member, lauded the readability and placement of campaign ads, telling Graham-Squire the organizers had done a “great job" (audio - <1m).
  • Dennis Maughan, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Pacific Northwest Regional Executive Director, was grateful for the presentation and asked about expanding the campaign’s reach beyond the Seattle area. Graham-Squire explained how WTSC money had allowed them to expand from King County into neighboring Pierce and Snohomish Counties, and “the data we've been using now is statewide data, so we looked at those three counties and we looked at the state, and it was pretty similar norms across” Washington. He added Most Steer Clear could “actually be used anywhere in Washington state and it would be comparable.” Graham-Squire had been asked by local prevention organizations to use Most Steer Clear materials after groups “put their own logos on it, or run it in their area and we're happy to share staff and connect people” (audio - 2m).
  • Shelly Baldwin, WTSC Director, expressed amazement that HYS surveys indicated “that we've seen decreases in King County high school stats…that's astounding." She then asked about youth engagement in creating the campaign. Graham-Squire replied that they had partnered with the UW “Public Health honors class last, this past spring” where students “created some TikTok videos which we haven't implemented yet, but they did some drafts of them,” as well as several “scripts for the audio ads and then we had those actually professionally recorded.” Baldwin felt that involving the target audience in messaging development “makes so much sense.” Graham-Squire noted they also had focus groups of youth review Most Steer Clear advertisements, stating in their last cohort “most of the young people said they had seen the campaign” (audio - 2m).
  • Linda Portnoy, Seattle University School of Law Adjunct Professor and former Lake Forest Park Municipal Court judge, wondered whether Graham-Squire had reached out to youth courts. Graham-Squire responded that he had not, but both he and Bledsoe planned to follow up with Portnoy about the idea. Graham-Squire also called for anyone with connections to “any of the drivers ed[ucation] programs…there's a lot of good opportunities to get some Most Steer Clear messaging out to those folks,” even if “they already have some impaired driving curriculum that they use” (audio - 1m).
    • Find out more from the Juvenile Courts in:
      • King County
      • Snohomish County
      • Pierce County
      • Whatcom County
      • Washington State Association of Youth Courts (WSAYC)
  • Melanie Dane, WTSC Traffic Resource Safety Prosecutor (TRSP) and Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC) Legal Consultant, brought up advertising the campaign on streaming platforms. Graham-Squire mentioned that ads had run on a local “CBS affiliate on broadcast TV, as well as on their streaming platforms.” They’d stopped advertising on Facebook, since “what we're hearing from young people these days is that nobody uses Facebook anymore…so we've moved away from that,” he explained (audio - 4m).
    • Most Steer Clear ads were running on Instagram and YouTube, and had appeared on Twitter, as well, he commented. However, with YouTube allowing some advertisements to be skipped, “we've heard from young people in our focus groups…that 99.5% of them skip any ad that comes up if they can…that's one of the reasons we like Spotify and we like the movie theater ads, because we're pretty sure that folks are getting those messages because they can't skip them as easily.”
    • Graham-Squire relayed how focus group members reported Snapchat as popular for communication between peers, but not as a news or advertising source. He remarked that TikTok was “definitely one where we're hoping to expand in the future,” as some UW students “did a really nice…quiz game show asking their peers what percent of people did they think drove under the influence, and that kind of stuff.”
  • Edica Esqueda, WTSC Impaired Driving Program Manager, thanked Graham-Squire, and said “it's been years” and she appreciated “you and your staff's dedication to quality content and very intentional distribution and placement” of ads. She credited Kilmer and others at UW for “a great project and a great program to expand.” Graham-Squire brought up that they would be publishing a new report after reviewing 2022 young adult health survey data (audio - 1m).