Red Ribbon Week

As part of Richardson ISD’s Red Ribbon Week, your child will be receiving 3 research-based lessons from the Stanford Reach Lab. This program is designed to help your child make healthy choices and avoid risky behaviors when it comes to drugs and alcohol. The 3 lessons are as follows:

1. Safety First: Drug Education 101
2. Can’t be Missed: Cannabis and Youth
3. Alcohol and Other Depressants (14 mins)

Important to Know: Many teens are curious about e-cigarettes. In 2022, about 14.1% of high school students and 3.3% of middle school students reported having used an e-cigarette in the last 30 days. In some areas, nearly half of high school students have tried an e-cigarette.

Many teens believe that e-cigarettes are safe. In reality, e-cigarettes contain nicotine and toxins, some of which are known to cause cancer. Nicotine is highly addictive, especially to a developing teen brain. What begins as experimentation can easily lead to a lifetime of nicotine addiction.

Children and youth become addicted to nicotine much faster than adults and it has more harmful effects on the developing adolescent brain, making it worse for kids than adults.

Nicotine use as a teen raises the risk of using other substances and experiencing addiction later in life.

All states prohibit the sale, purchase, or use of e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine (e-liquid) by anyone under the age of 21. Most states also prohibit e-cigarette use anywhere on school property or at school-sponsored events.

We encourage you to speak with your child about what they are learning in the drug prevention lessons. As a parent or guardian, you have a lot of influence over your child’s choices.

It is not always easy for parents and kids to talk about these topics together. Yet research has shown that when parents tell their teens not to use tobacco, they are much less likely to do so.

In addition to learning about the dangers of e-cigarettes, students will also learn about the dangers of substance use on the teenage brain in general as well as the risks of underage alcohol-use.

We hope that your student will find this week’s lessons helpful as they think through how they can refuse substances in the future.