ORANGE PARK – A new public service announcement aims to remind Clay County residents that it is in the best interest of the community for their families to stay drug free.

The Florida National Guard Drug Demand Reduction Program donated the time and effort to produce the video, filmed Monday morning at the Police Athletic League grounds in Orange Park. Locally, the program worked with the Clay Action Coalition, Clay County Schools, Baptist Health and local law enforcement agencies and first responders. Capt. Michael Coy, of the St. Augustine-based Civil Operations group that includes the DDR program, said his command’s primary goal is to work with community agencies as well as providing anti-drug presentations in schools.

“The point is to get across to the community that we’re not just an anti-drug coalition,” Coy said. “[All the agencies in the PSA] are partnering together to make sure that we’re all on the same page and to make sure that we’re keeping our kids away from drugs.”

Once the PSA is complete, in about a week, Coy said the first place the video will be available to the public will be through the Florida National Guard Facebook page. After that, it will go out on the social media accounts of all participating agencies. The ultimate goal is to get it in front of as many people in Clay County as possible. Clay County School Superintendent Addison Davis plans to implement the message regularly into schools’ morning announcements and the CAC hopes to partner with Jacksonville television stations to show the video intermittently throughout regular programming.

“We all need to stand together in the fight against substance abuse,” Davis said. “We’re here to help our youth make the right decisions so that they can stay healthy both mentally and physically.”

In the video, there will be a series of stand-up interviews cut together that feature monologues from Coy, Davis, Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, and CAC Executive Director Donna Wethington. The goal is to keep their messages short and succinct and present a unified front against drug use by the youth in the community, as well as the adults.

“We want to promote a pro-social message that it’s never OK to use drugs,” Wethington said. “It’s important to keep that message that we, as adults, don’t want drugs in our community. We want to stop it and we want to start young.”

The final product should be about two minutes long and in the typical drug-resistance education fashion, comes with a catchy tagline, “Choose to Refuse,” which will be shouted by dozens of young volunteers toward the end of the video, all wearing bright red T-shirts that bear the slogan.

“The goal is to get this out to all grade levels, in the morning announcements, and especially during Red Ribbon Week,” Wethington said. “We want to keep kids healthy and keep their brains healthy and promote the development of their social skills.”