Once again, we got distracted for a few minutes/months and now find summer so close we can almost taste the watermelon and potato salad.  We hope it’s been a stellar year for our Project ALERT partners.  We have so many teachers, school guidance counselors and resource officers, community health personnel, principals, members of law enforcement, district superintendents, and Young Marines leaders to thank for keeping Project ALERT one of the most widely-used substance use prevention education programs in the country.  Hats off to all of you!  Now…clock out and enjoy your summer break!

What substances are kids combining these days?  Hint: it’s not iced tea and lemonade.  Some of these newest elixirs are mass-marketed, ready-to-consume infusions; others are simply born out of the culture; and both pose more health risks than an Arnold Palmer.  We seem to be in the midst of a commingling revolution, and even coffee is joining the uprising! So, grab a cup, preferably THC-free, and find out what’s been brewing.

Welcome, Newbies!

We want to welcome some of our newest partners in Seattle, WA, Mesquite, TX, Shepherd, MT, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  Happy to have you on board!

 

Lesson on Prescription Painkillers and Heroin to Join Project ALERT Curriculum

Educator staff have spent the last year-and-a-half drafting and pilot-testing a new lesson that’s relevant for the times and relatable to youth, with plenty of collaboration and groupwork for today’s activity-centric teens.  It’s slated to drop this coming fall.  Feel like doing some early-on legwork?  Check out our teacher supplemental guide (a shortened student-oriented version will be available soon), and take in one of the following videos: 

 

• CNN video, “This Is Your Brain on Heroin”
• NIDA video, “Choose Your Path” 
• FBI/DEA film, “Chasing the Dragon: The Life of An Opiate Addict”

 

Hit Me, Baby…One More Time

Once again, millions of Americans in at least 9 states will be casting their votes on recreational and medical marijuana legalization this fall.  Find out how 24 initiatives (so far) may impact drug policy in your state. 

 

Southern Summer Comfort 

Taking a detour from our usual custom for the year-end issue of the Educator--leaving you with excerpts from several classic writings about summer--we thought we’d give you a full Monty, a bona fide gem called A Boy’s Summer Song by Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of America’s first modern black poets. This one almost makes us long to be in Houston in the dead of August (well, maybe if we were sitting behind home plate at an Astros game).  So, put away the cell phone, pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, grab a hammock, and enjoy.

 

          ‘Tis fine to play                                      With line and hook
          In the fragrant hay                                 By a babbling brook
          And romp on the golden load                  The fisherman's sport we ply
          To ride old Jack                                      And list the song
          To the barn and back                              Of the feathered throng
          Or tramp by a shady road                       That flit in the branches nigh
          To pause and drink                                 At last we strip
          At a mossy brink                                     For a quiet dip
          Ah, that is the best of joy                      Ah, that is the best of joy
          And so I say                                           For this I say
          On a summer’s day                                On a summer's day
          What’s so fine as being a boy?                What's so fine as being a boy?  
          Ha, Ha!                                                 Ha, Ha! 

 

We're Here to Help!

Can’t remember your password?  Can’t find your certificate?  Need a suggestion for combining lessons?  As a reminder, we’re always here to help with questions you may have about program implementation and web site issues.  Feel free to contact us via email or at 1-800-ALERT-10.  We’ll lay down our fishin' poles and get back to you as soon as possible.

Recent headlines seem to be dominated by news about the opioid epidemic in the United States.  As rates of opiate use by middle schools are still quite low, it can be a bit challenging to present material about these drugs in an applicable and understandable way. However, most 7^th and 8^th graders are acutely aware of the popularity of prescription drugs and the dangers associated with them – perhaps they heard about a celebrity’s descent into addiction or a family member using too much oxycodone. But what they may not be mindful of is how use of legitimate pain medication prescribed by a doctor can turn into heroin use and addiction. After much careful deliberation among our staff, we feel the best approach is to make the topic relatable to what's happening in the current culture, and explain the logical connection "from legitimate to illicit use" to inform young teens early on about the reasons why people use opiates and about their health benefits and risks, with the intention to help them make good, healthy choices.

 

For the last year-and-a-half, we've been developing a new core lesson on heroin and other opioids that will soon be added to the Project ALERT curriculum. Though nearly complete, we're delaying its release in order to pilot-test the content. As we have stressed in the past, Project ALERT is an evidence-based program and any additional content we add goes through a rigorous evaluation process. Thus, we recently finished our initial round of pilot-testing in several classrooms in Ventura, California, and received some great, instructive feedback from both students and teachers. Generally, the response was very positive, but students did have a few suggestions for enhancement. For starters, it appears that middle-schoolers feel more comfortable "hamming it up" in front of their peers than do older kids; in other words, they want to do more roleplays during the lesson. Students really enjoyed meeting and working with other students, and they liked the information about the brain and how substances can affect it.  We're just about finished fulfilling their requests, and the new addition to the core lesson line-up should be ready for prime time by this fall.  With U.S. lawmakers recently authorizing approximately $6 billion in funds to address the opioid epidemic over the next two years,[1] and with states like Maryland and Ohio now mandating the inclusion of opioid-focused content in state-funded substance prevention education programming,[2] we feel strongly that this material will become an invaluable component of the Project ALERT curriculum.  Broadening the subject matter of Project ALERT couldn't come at a better time.

 

With class time being an issue for so many educators and community providers, this new lesson will be promoted as an alternate to core lesson 8 (Inhalants). But ideally, it would be added as an additional lesson in year 1, with the goal of maintaining maximum program fidelity within the original construct of Project ALERT. An important note is that we still need to test the revised curriculum for effectiveness, such as through learning whether inclusion of this new lesson has any effects on preventing heroin and other opioid abuse among students in middle school and beyond. We have plans to do this in the coming year.

 

We want to recognize our senior trainer and original contributor to the Project ALERT curriculum, Dr. Pamela Luna, who facilitated the recent pilot-testing sessions.  Thanks, Pam!

 

With the legalization of the sale and possession of recreational marijuana in several states has come a flood of clever inventions and marketing campaigns, causing many of us, especially educators of youth, to adopt a fully openmouthed posture. "How'd they even think of that?"  "I wouldn't have come up with marijuana-infused mac n' cheese in a million years."  Soon, the label on beer could be worthy of a second look.  If it's noticeably "greener" than other labels, or has more kid-friendly colors and motif, or if it's donning a giant pot leaf, it could be suspect.  Pot has been infusing beer in Europe for many years; and in the last couple of years, US bottlers have jumped on the beerwagon, adding non-psychoactive strains of cannabis to their product.  But recently, the U.S.-based Blue Moon Brewing Company decided to brew their barley and hops with actual THC.  A flood of copycats, and advertising campaigns to grace your city's billboards, will follow. Related ads are already jolting us out of our driver's seats as we drive down Ventura Boulevard.  Have you yet heard of the frightening 1,000-mg-of-THC Blackout Brownie, equivalent to about 100 joints?  California is barely a year-and-a-half into the passing of legal recreational marijuana, and the marketers are already shouting at kids about how fun it is to pass out from using it. One of our Project ALERT advisory board members at RAND, Dr. Elizabeth J. D’Amico, recently wrote an op-ed for USA Today describing the impact that these marijuana ads can have on youth.

 

Teens have also been feeling the highs and lows of alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED) for the last few years, adding products like Monster, 5-hour Energy, and Four Loko to vodka and beer to feel what's been called the "wide awake drunk" effect.  It's a practice endorsed by high school students more than middle school students, and by the college crowd more than high schoolers.  The effects?  One recent study by our colleagues at RAND determined that "… AmED users drank more often, more heavily, and reported more negative consequences in high school. AmED users were also more likely to report poor grades, delinquent behavior, substance use-related unsafe driving, public intoxication, and drug use than AwoED (alcohol without energy drinks) users in high school." As with the use of other substances, many teens aren't aware that changes can take place in the brain when it's flooded with combinations of mind-altering chemicals, and what decisions and consequences could result.

 

And then comes the question… what's that distinctive, skunky aroma coming from the coffee pot?  Turns out that it's a blend of fine Columbian coffee and fine Columbian (pot). This one really surprised us (but why??). If your teenager takes a sudden interest in your Keurig machine, take a glance at the coffee pod label and make sure it doesn't bear the name Brewbudz. At $7 a pop, it's unlikely that the practice will be habit-forming for most teens, deterred by the high price tag for the 10-50mg of THC in their travel mug. Nevertheless, café de chronic has arrived and is looking to hook new recruits.

 

The idea of teens combining substances to test what effects will be produced isn't novel - it's just one more thing to monitor.

After coming off the 2016 high of 5 state victories, 2017 turned out to be a bust for pot, with at least 6 measures in 3 states failing. As is typical in non-election years, the advertising dollars weren't there, issue visibility was minimal, and voter turnouts were low.  But the tide of legalization may rise again this fall as voters face a replenished inventory of state initiatives advocating various measures for marijuana legalization.

 

So far, 9 states are expected to include pot on their November 2018 ballots. Most measures are aimed at decriminalizing either recreational or medical marijuana, with a handful focused on the regulation of industrial hemp products.  Early predictions suggest that Michigan and Oklahoma are likely to pass legislation in support of recreational and medical marijuana use, respectively.  Others--Arizona, Utah, Missouri, and Nebraska--have a pretty good shot at turning in enough signatures by ballot deadlines.  By November, the total number of states allowing sale and possession of recreational marijuana could increase to 13, plus Washington DC.  (In a bold move, Vermont recently approved the adult use of recreational marijuana entirely by the legislative process, rather than by statewide ballot.)

 

Public support for a medical cannabis use initiative is quite high in Utah, and, perhaps a bit surprisingly, among the Mormon community, where about 66% of parishioners favor the passing the law that would "protect seriously ill patients from arrest and prosecution if they use medical marijuana according to their doctors’ recommendations, allow medical marijuana card holders to purchase up to two ounces of cannabis or 10 grams of cannabidiol or tetrahydrocannabinol over a 14-day period, and establish restrictions on where and how licensed marijuana dispensaries could operate.” [1] Utah is among 16 states that allow for use of non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) oil to treat a variety of health problems, and support for total decriminalization continues to grow.

 

With record numbers of Americans--roughly two-thirds--in favor of legalization, 2018 could prove to be another banner year for the advancement of both recreational and medical marijuana.

 

It’s important to keep in mind how to talk to young people about marijuana in the age of legalization, which is something we have covered in our updated Project ALERT lessons, supplemental guides, and in prior newsletters.