Find the right resources to spread awareness and empower all students for Red Ribbon Week!
Observed annually every October 23-31 to honor the memory of Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique (Kiki) Camarena, Red Ribbon Week is a time to reinforce alcohol, tobacco, and drug prevention, recognize the harmful effects of substance abuse, and promote the importance of making healthy and safe decisions.
In honor of the 2024 Red Ribbon Week theme of “Life is a Movie, Film Drug Free,” we’re sharing proactive strategies and standards-aligned resources to help educators facilitate meaningful class discussions while supporting the health and well-being of all students.
Introducing Medication Safety
Get a “Dose of Knowledge” with CVS Health! An extension of the Pharmacists Teach program, Dose of Knowledge strives to empower educators, pharmacists, parents, and other members of the community to support education related to substance misuse and guide students to make good decisions for the health and well-being of themselves and their community. These standards-aligned K-12 classroom resources give educators everything they need to teach students of all ages about medication safety and mental health! With new resources like the choose-your-own-adventure, Think it Through, educators and students can engage in an interactive animated adventure empowering healthy choices and decision-making skills.
Preparing for Positive Choices
Designed with the whole child in mind, cannabis classroom activities from Ask, Listen, Learn focus on how kids interact with society and how society influences their behavior. Through these informative and engaging drug prevention activities for middle school, students will:
- Address the dangers and effects of underage cannabis use on the developing brain, both short- and long-term, while collaborating on refusal and exit strategies for peer pressure.
- Separate facts from fiction through class activities, scientific research, and meaningful peer discussion.
- Explore the evolution of federal and state regulations, engage in meaningful debate as they develop their personal ideas and beliefs, then assume the role of an elected official and create their own mock legislation.
Ask, Listen, Learn is built to help students uncover the science behind how alcohol and cannabis affect developing brains, bodies, and behavior. With these prevention resources, both educators and families can equip students with vital prevention skills and dive deep into the science, data, and facts, helping kids decide to say “YES” to a healthy lifestyle and “NO” to all risky behaviors.
—Beth Meyer, Vice President of Partner Impact at Discovery Education.
Look into Real Life
Created in partnership with the DEA, Operation Prevention provides tools to support every member of the community with the power of prevention. These resources are aligned to national health and science standards and integrate seamlessly into classroom instruction. Through a series of hands-on investigations, students will explore the science behind substance misuse, and the resulting impacts on our brain and body. Kickstart life-saving conversations this Red Ribbon Week with English & Spanish language resources, self-paced modules, culture-based content, and much more!
The latest Virtual Field Trip from Operation Prevention, An Ounce of Prevention, is here to empower students in grades 9- 12 with knowledge they can use to make healthy decisions, become advocates for prevention in their communities and fight back against the fentanyl crisis. Students will meet people working on the ground in communities nationwide to amplify awareness and decrease the demand for fentanyl and counterfeit drugs.
This year, honor Red Ribbon Week by sharing ideas for making healthy choices, information to raise awareness of real-life situations, and ways to make responsible choices in and out of school!