The $2 million statewide media blitz, "End Meth Now," kicks off this week with TV commercials, print and radio ads - in both English and Spanish - designed to show Utahns just how pervasive and destructive meth is.

Addicts, the ads suggest, can be anyone: a homemaker. A reverend's daughter. Or your big sister.

The Web site that accompanies the meth ads, endmethnow.org, shows a diaper bag stuffed with a bottle, baby toys and a pacifier - "Another blatant sign of a Utah meth user," it says.

Alisha Berry, who attended a Monday press conference at the Capitol launching the campaign, used to be one such user.

A mother of three who formerly worked in accounting, Berry started using meth as "a social thing," she said. It turned into a seven-year addiction that cost her her job and custody of two children.

Broke and homeless, Berry sought help at a women's and children's shelter that required its residents to receive substance abuse treatment. Four years later, she's still sober - and taking care of two daughters.

The 39-year-old said she could have never foreseen the consequences of her choice to start using meth. "Never in a million years," Berry said. "I never thought it would take me to where I was at."

It's a story Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., whose office teamed up with the Utah Association of Counties and Utah Methamphetamine Joint Task Force to create the campaign, said he hears all too often.

"There is a multiplier effect because of this . . . that I don't think we can even begin to quantify," he said.

In Utah, the meth problem has hit women of child bearing age especially hard. A 2006 Department of Human Services report shows that 58 percent of women seeking substance abuse treatment have children at home.

What's more, many children placed in the state's foster care system are removed from their homes because their parents are meth users, the report states.

"This campaign is designed to reveal the true face of meth addiction in Utah and to educate citizens on what they can do to take action as part of the solution," said Lisa Michele Church, the state's Health and Human Services director and co-chair of the Utah Methamphetamine Joint Task Force.

The first of a five-phase plan to combat meth use, End Meth Now will also provide materials and assistance to county administrators and treatment professionals in Utah that will help them take the campaign's message directly to their communities.

For more information about meth use and resources available to those seeking help, visit the Web site endmethnow.org.

lrosetta@sltrib.com