By STEPHEN GROVES

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota sparked online guffaws Monday by rolling out an anti-drug campaign featuring people saying, “Meth, I’m on it,” and the governor said the backlash proves the effort to raise awareness is working.

The nearly $1.4 million campaign aimed at tackling the state’s methamphetamine epidemic includes $449,000 paid to the Minneapolis-based ad agency that created the tagline. A press release for the campaign said it uses “impactful, even shocking” images of South Dakotans to try to communicate that meth should be tackled by everyone.

The images featured the words, “Meth. I’m on it.” over photos of people in cowboy hats, in a coffee shop or on a football field.

“We didn’t want this to look like every other anti-drug campaign,” said Laurie Gill, the Secretary for the Department of Social Services, which oversaw the campaign.

Many on social media joked about the images making it appear the people in the photos are on meth.

One Twitter user posted, “It seems that if I’m on meth, I can live to a ripe old age, eat in restaurants, play football with my pals, and have a family. That sounds much better than the life I’m having now. Somebody get me some meth.”

Another Twitter user posted: “Surprising anti-meth campaign in South Dakota. With the theme ‘Meth. I’m on it,’ what could go wrong?”

Gov. Kristi Noem defended the campaign, posting, “Hey Twitter, the whole point of this ad campaign is to raise awareness. So I think that’s working …”

Noem, appearing in a video for the campaign, said South Dakota’s meth problem is “growing at an alarming rate.” According to the state’s Department of Social Services, the number of 12- to 17-year-olds who reported using meth in the last year is double the national average. The state has also seen the number of people seeking treatment for meth addiction double from 2014 to 2018.

The ad campaign includes a website, billboards and TV ads that will run through May. Gill said the price paid to Broadhead Co. to produce the ads was justified considering that meth addiction is on the rise in South Dakota.

“This is a huge issue,” she said. “And we’re willing to do what we have to do to get people on it.”

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the slogan is “Meth. I’m on it,” not “I’m on meth.”

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s partisan divide is evident when Americans are asked about what should be done to help the nation’s struggling local news industry.

While two-thirds of Democrats say news organizations in need should be able to receive government or private funding in order to survive, only 17 percent of Republicans feel the same way, according to a study released Sunday by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. For independents, 37 percent back such funding.

Republicans are also more likely to take a sink-or-swim attitude toward the press. While 72 percent of Democrats say local newspapers are vital and should be preserved even if they’re failing financially, 76 percent of Republicans say they’re just like any other business and if they can’t hack it, tough luck.

“It’s not surprising to me to see the level of polarization in general shading most people’s views toward anything to do with the media,” said Sam Gill, vice president for communities and impact and special adviser to the president at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Republicans are more likely to view the media as hostile and biased, along with having a deep-seated suspicion toward government involvement in the public discourse, he said.

Local news has suffered over the past two decades as readers and advertisers found alternatives online. More than 2,000 local newspapers in the United States have closed since 2004, according to the University of North Carolina.

One barrier toward halting that trend is a lack of public awareness: The Knight/Gallup study found that 56 percent of Americans wrongly believe that local news organizations are doing well financially.

There are positive signs. The survey found that nearly six in 10 Americans consider newspapers an important symbol of civic pride. Eighty-six percent of those polled said everyone should have access to local news.

But the number of people supporting news has dwindled. The survey said 30 percent of adults say they pay a monthly or annual fee to a news source. Roughly half of the people who said they have subscribed to a news source in their lifetime no longer do so, and 44 percent said they had stopped paying for at least one type of subscription over the past five years.

The organizations took two surveys over the summer that included 1,701 people chosen by random sampling to be on a Gallup panel. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Gill said journalists have been adjusting the way they produce news to accommodate the changing ways in which Americans access it.

“I think we should be asking the same questions about the business,” he said.