WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. —
RADD is honored to be among 31 California law enforcement agencies, 11 crime laboratories, 2 nonprofit organizations through pass-through, and 1 law enforcement education sharing $12 million in grant funds from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to help address the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
The grants are the result of California’s Proposition 64, the Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which tasked the CHP with administering grants for education, prevention, and enforcement programs to help communities combat impaired driving and crime laboratories conduct forensic toxicology testing. Funding for the grants comes from a tax on the cultivation and sale of cannabis and cannabis products sold in California.
Hosted by the Tulare County Office of Education, the nonprofit Recording Artists Against Drunk Driving (RADD) was named as an education grant recipient to teach young adults ages 18-34, primarily college students, budtenders, and bartenders, about impaired driving laws, while highlighting the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
In response to the need for accessing multiple educational channels detailed in the CHP’s Impaired Driving Task Force report to the Legislature (https://www.chp.ca.gov/programs-services/programs/impaired-driver-enforcement-programs/final-public-notice), RADD, a nonprofit member of the task force, developed Project RADD as an integrated social media and point of sale/point of consumption-driven campaign to be developed with Hospitality and Cannabis Industry guidance.
According to RADD President, Erin Meluso, “RADD’s goal is to reach college students, diverse young adults, bar waitstaff, and budtenders to educate them on the rules of the road for legal substance sales and use, and the risks of driving under the influence of any impairing substance, primarily alcohol and cannabis.”
To quickly launch the campaign, RADD is recruiting partners within alcohol and cannabis industry leadership for messaging credibility and access to bar and dispensary staff, plus healthcare agencies and local law enforcement agencies for materials-distribution support.
RADD invites input and resources from any interested stakeholders. For more information, please contact RADD at [email protected]
About RADD
California-based RADD has been honored with three prestigious national awards, two National Highway Traffic Safety Association Lifesavers Awards, and one Governors Highway Safety Association Award for its outstanding DUI prevention work with teens, younger adults ages 18-34, and communities, inclusive of regional and national coalition-building. A member of the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) and the National Alliance to Stop Impaired Driving (NASID), and the national Higher Education Center for Alcohol Misuse Prevention and Recovery’s (HECAOD)’s “National Consortium of State Coalition Leaders,” RADD’s primary focus is creating lifestyle-oriented alcohol and drug driving prevention programming for college students. The RADD Ohio Project is the pilot for a national model that will be expanding to other states in 2023-4. To learn more, please visit www.radd.org and www.raddohio.org.
