Grieving Dad Angered by Urban Outfitters, Hairroin Addiction Campaign

Written by Lanning Taliaferro

A Manhattan Urban Outfitters store has been handing out a freebie on behalf of its marketing partner, the Hairroin hair salon—promotional pens that look like hypodermic needles and are inscribed with “I Love Hairroin.”

The promotion has infuriated grieving families and overworked drug counselors.

“Such a marketing technique in today’s environment where close to 40,000 children are dying each year from drug overdoses and over 20 million people suffer from substance dependence and abuse, is despicable and clearly demonstrates that Urban Outfitters and their marketing team are insensitive to the public’s pain on this issue,” said Michael Zall, a Rockland County NY resident whose son Jeremy died in 2013 of a drug overdose.

It’s not the first time Urban Outfitters has chosen drug addiction as a marketing tool, said officials at The Watershed Addiction Treatment Programs.

“Around this time last year, Urban Outfitters carried multiple products that promoted prescription drugs. The mockery was displayed on mugs, shot glasses, and flasks sold at the store. Controversy stemmed based on how the items made light of prescription pill drug abuse and promoted drinking alcohol. Letters from politicians and anti-drug groups poured in to the company’s CEO about the wrong message that the drug-related products were sending to people who shopped at the store, especially the young age group,” they wrote on the watershed.com blog, featuring this photo of the promotional materials.

Zall teamed up with State Senator David Carlucci and advocates against drug abuse throughout the area releasing statements condemning the marketing technique as cheap, insensitive and stupid.

Carlucci pointed out that New York is in the midst of a heroin epidemic and questioned why corporations like Urban Outfitters and Hairroin Salon are glamorizing the use of heroin and the disease of addiction.

“The salon itself promotes an ‘Addicted to Style’ campaign,” Carlucci pointed out. “This disgusting promotion has no place in New York and I call on CEO Tedford Marlow to apologize to the victims of addiction in New York. We have worked too hard in New York for addiction to become a promotion tool.”

The marketing campaign drew fire from Parents Helping Parents, a nonprofit organization in the lower Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey.

“It’s sad that a company whose target market is young men and women, would partner with a salon that glamorizes Heroin,” said Janet Rivers of Parents Helping Parents. ”The current heroin epidemic is claiming way too many young lives, and while a drug theme might not encourage someone to use heroin, it certainly sends a message that it’s as cool and hip as the salon and the store that feature it.”