The Legacy of Prevention
And welcome back. Happy Monday. It is another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. And today I’m hanging out with Dr. Caroline Dupont and she is so fun. We had a call before and we’re so in line in prevention and the strategies that we use. I had to get her on the podcast to talk more about her organization, One Choice Prevention. So let me just tell you a little bit about Dr. Caroline. She is the vice president of the Institute for Behavior and Health and is a Psychiatrist Board Certified in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. So you’re going to learn all about the brain today. We’re going to talk about prevention. You’re going to learn some awesome resources that you can use in your prevention strategies. And I’m excited to learn a lot. So Dr. Caroline, thank you so much for being on the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been so excited about this ever since we talked last week.
Yes, it was so fun. It was so goofy. I really remember your story is kind of a legacy story, right? You’re doing some family work. Can you tell us about this, how you came into this world?
I literally was born into this world and that is a pretty funny thing to say. Sometimes I say that like my whole life is based on the illegal drug trade and that’s a pretty crazy thing to say. So again, I’m a physician, I’m a psychiatrist and I followed in my father’s footsteps. So my father is also a psychiatrist and he’s also certified in both psychiatry and addiction medicine. And so growing up, I followed like very closely when he would come home from dinner and we would have these wonderful table conversations about things that were on his mind and experiences he had and thoughts that he had and he would bounce ideas off of me and my sister. And it was so exciting and it really felt to me like this is really important work. And one of the things that his work is he was in private practice. And so that, you know, motivated me to be a psychiatrist.
But he also was the first director of NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And he was also the second White House drug czar. And so when I was a kid, he had these very important public policy roles. And so again, what he was talking about was always so exciting and felt so important. And I thought, I want to do that too.
And so initially I actually didn’t follow in that part of the footsteps. I followed in the kind of private practice psychiatry realm. But as I went through my career, I thought I’m missing something and this is what I’m missing. And so I came to work with him at the Institute for Behavior and Health where he is still the president of that organization, but I’m the vice president now. And what I’m going to talk to you about today, One Choice Prevention is kind of my baby. It’s kind of my part of the Institute for Behavior and Health.
That’s so cool. I love hearing that story of how what you can achieve when you’re getting trained as a child at the dinner table.
Yes, totally, totally. Those dinner table conversations are important. Look what could happen to you.
One Choice Prevention: Empowering Youth
Exactly. That’s amazing. And when I go to One Choice Prevention, I’m seeing a lot of positive social norms and, you know, having students believe that one thing is happening, but the truth is another, and how you’re empowering coalitions and prevention organizations and in schools to share resources that are helping tell that story, that healthy things are happening and you can be a part of that. Yes versus just focusing on the negative or what’s wrong, let’s focus on the positive, what’s right and how to increase that positive. Because one of my favorite quotes is from Mother Teresa. And he said, people ask me why I don’t go to anti-war rallies. And she said, but I’ll go to every peace rally. And it’s the difference between focusing on the negative and finding the solution and focusing on that. And I think that’s what you’re doing.
It’s so much. It’s exactly what we’re doing. And it’s so much what our passion is, is really thinking about not scare tactics, but about giving kids use their parents, their care providers, their teachers, their pediatricians, whoever needs this information, giving them information that’s actually positive and hopeful and aspirational and also just really possible. I think sometimes people think, that’s not possible. Like that’s pie in the sky. And we’re like, no, look at the data. And that’s the thing about me and also the Institute for Behavior and Health is we’re all data and research driven. It’s not like, here’s something we think. It’s like, no, no, here’s something that we can show you.
Yes. So tell us more about One Choice and then I definitely want to have you teach us some things, but what does One Choice prevention do and how do others benefit from it?
Oh My gosh. So One Choice Prevention is an initiative of IBH and it’s something that came about as a basis of some of the research we did, which I’ll show you in a few minutes. But we realized that we had a different way of thinking about prevention than we had seen before. There are amazing people out there doing prevention. So I want to clarify that. I’m not suggesting that other people aren’t doing it right. are the people doing prevention are amazing and I’m inspired by them every day. But we realized that we had some data and some information and some concepts that were really different than what is kind of in mainstream prevention and really helpful.
And so, we kind of put it together and packaged it and initially it didn’t have a name and then came up with this name One Choice and I’ll show you the data that came about with that meaning that but it boils down to being this concept that kids are really making the choice to use or not to use. Once they make a choice to use, they have a huge range of things like I might use alcohol, but then I also might use cigarettes or I might use marijuana or I might take pills. But if you’ve made the decision, I’m not going to use, then that’s one choice that you made. You’ve kind of made a choice for yourself. And a lot of kids are making that choice not to use. And so that’s where we get that term, one choice.
And so then we started speaking and at first we were speaking to doctors and we were talking to kind of high level policymakers and things like that. And then we met with a wonderful prevention worker from Rye, New York. And she’s like, this is so important. You have to come to my community and talk to my people. And so we did and she has become a partner of ours and we now partner with organizations all across the country who are inspired by and helped by, again, our materials, our data, our materials, our handouts, our activities that we can provide and brand for you so that you can kind of put it up there with your stuff on it that really supports the work that you’re doing.
Okay, that’s cool. So the things that you’re going to share with us are some of those data points, maybe some brain science. What else are going to take us through? Give us a little teaser.
Yeah, the teaser is kind of what are the basics of that concept of one choice? And then also, what are some of the things that can be tailored when you’re talking to different audiences? Like when you’re talking to different audiences of kids, when you’re talking to different audiences of parents and caregivers, and when you’re talking as a prevention, like what can you as a prevention provider do or a medical provider or whatever your role is?
Because what we find is this is useful kind of like no matter who you are. I actually gave a talk recently where I was like, who is this audience? was a very big conference I was at and I was in one of the plenary talks, know, like tons of people in the room at the same time. And a lot of them were lawyers and insurance people. They were from all different walks of life. was like, hmm, how did they think about themselves doing prevention?
And I realized that we who were in the field, no matter where you are in the field, have a role in prevention and have a voice in prevention as a trusted expert. And so whether that’s around your own dinner table or talking to your family or friends or your own community, you have the opportunity to be a voice of primary prevention.
That’s good. And that’s, I mean, as someone who’s in the field, but have felt like before, even before I got in the field, like it was important to hear that, no, it doesn’t really matter if you’re, if you work at a hospital, if you, and maybe you just have kids or you’re in a family, you’re invested in prevention because something you deeply love and care about, or maybe takes care of you is invested in prevention and affected by it.
That’s so, it’s so right. I’ve spoken to conferences that are all physicians that treat people with advanced substance use disorders. And again, I feel like they’re not going to be that interested in prevention because that’s not what they do. And yet they were so excited by this information because they’re really saddened and overwhelmed by what kind of I call the fire hose of people coming into their programs and the terrible, devastating stories that they’re hearing all day long, and they feel kind of hopeless about it and helpless. And so me giving them the good news about prevention and the good news about the progress we’ve made is really heartening to them. So they were actually extremely enthusiastic when I was a little bit thinking like, they’re going to be like, what’s this about?
Yeah. Well, you know, what’s amazing about the different areas of prevention, right? Whether it’s primary, secondary or tertiary or going full-fledged into calling it something different, right? Like the recovery field or different things. But with, if you think of it as like a hockey team, I’m really getting into hockey right now. So this is what came into my mind is the goalie.
Right. gets the most stressful part because all the pucks are flying at them. And that’s probably that person who works in the hospital who is seeing overdose. They’re seeing death. They’re seeing hospitalizations like psychiatric breaks, all these things that are really heavy and realizing that, wait, if I invested my team on the other side of the, I don’t know, a rink that that’s actually where the goal prevention starts is if we’re on that side, half of the court.
I’m going to have a great job because I have to defend less of these pucks. And how amazing would it be if we have less people in the hospitals dealing with this? And that’s what prevention is. It’s saying we’re getting so far ahead of it that we have less tragedy coming at us. And that’s why it makes so much sense economically too, right?
Oh my gosh, absolutely absolutely the cost of substance use disorders to our society but also to our individuals and our families and our communities is really unimaginable. I mean it really is unimaginable in terms of the cost of financial costs and also the literal cost of human lives. And so this is serious work and a lot of times people you know again they focus on that treatment and recovery side. I love that. mean, I’m very pro treatment and recovery. I work in that in my own professional life all the time. But wouldn’t it be amazing if we could decrease the number of people that needed that? That, to me, would be amazing. If you thought about it as a different disease like colon cancer or something like that, if I said I have a way to dramatically cut the number of people who are developing colon cancer, and it’s actually really straightforward. Wouldn’t everybody want to hear that? Let’s do that. Because substance use disorders are chronic lifelong disorders. And then there are a lot of other unrelated, not substance use disorder, but related adverse impacts of substance use, especially early substance use. so wouldn’t it be amazing if we could make a difference for that?
Yes, absolutely. And let’s do this. Let’s dive right into your presentation. We can pull that out because now I’m primed. I’m ready to learn. Excellent. I see your slides and if you’re watching on YouTube, that’s great. If you’re driving, that’s okay. Keep listening. We’ll walk through all the visuals and everything for you. But I wanted to take a quick second, Dr. Caroline, and give a shout out to our friend, Debbie Bernt from Substance Free Athletics. And I know she’s got an episode on here, which was awesome. So shout out, Debbie. Thank you for introducing us so that we could share all this great information with our audience. Dr. Caroline, take it away.
Data-Driven Insights for Substance Use Prevention
Yes, and thank you, Debbie. I absolutely agree. She is the one who introduced us and it was such a great introduction. So thank you so much. So I’m going to go through these slides. But again, if you’re just listening, no problem, because you can hear everything that I’m saying. It doesn’t need the slide, but sometimes a picture, I feel like, really reinforces this for us. So we call this One Choice for Health, a data-driven youth blood prevention message. And I’m just pointing out again that idea that I’m really like that data, the research, that’s very important to me that what we’re talking about is based in science. And then as a youth led is another key to me, it’s great for anybody to be hearing it from a knowledgeable adult. That’s very important, but even better if they can hear it from a young person who has made this choice for themselves not to use substances.
So just reminding us that substance use disorder is a pediatric onset disease. We talked about that a little bit, but 90% of people with substance use disorders begin that use before the age of 18, and often way before the age of 18, often much younger than that. And what we know from the data is that the earlier and the heavier that use, the more likely that person is to develop that substance use disorder, again, a chronic lifelong disorder but we’re also thinking about the increased risk for other adverse health outcomes. So that’s why we have to think about this disorder in youth. And the reason this happens, it’s not magic, it’s because of the developing brain.
The reason that early and more frequent use is putting that person at risk is because of the developing brain. The developing brain is vulnerable to substance use because anything that happens to our brain during those periods of development can affect the brain not only right then but long term. We know that from concussion protocols, for example. That’s something I like to talk about because, when I was a kid, we didn’t really worry about concussions. Now we’re like, that’s actually bad. Repeat concussions is really bad when you’re coming to the developing brain. When you know better, you do better. You change your policy. You change your behavior. Us knowing that the brain, when it’s developing, is vulnerable is really important information. And one of the things we know is that use before the age of 18, people have a 25% chance risk of developing a substance use disorder. But if they push off that first use, that initiation of use of any of these substances that hijack the reward center of the brain, if we push off that use to the age of 21, there’s only a 4% chance of developing a substance use disorder.
And that is pretty dramatic. We don’t often think about this, but substance use disorders are a communicable disease. It’s not really the way we think about it, but you think about communicable disease like COVID or the common cold. But in fact, substance use is also spread from one person to another person. And it’s not malicious. It’s often social and even kind of helpful or friendly. So it might be like, hey, take this. This helps me sleep or this helps me study or decreases my anxiety or come have fun with us. This is what we do when we have fun. And so because the initiation phase often doesn’t have a lot of adverse consequences that novice user might look at that more experienced user and be like, they’re fine. They’re doing well. I like them or I admire them. I’m going to do that too. And it seems pretty safe problems are later in life, not right away. I do like to point out that that’s changed a little bit with things like fentanyl and high-potency THC, and then also that just huge number of commercial products that are coming down the pipe that are changing that conversation. So we do have to remember that sometimes early initiation is associated with terrible consequences, even death. And this is what we call a scary fact, not a scare tactic. We’re not at all into scare tactics. That’s really, they’re kind of ineffective for youth. But this is a scary fact that if you don’t give them that information, then they’re not gonna know it.
Understanding Mental Health and Substance Use
When I’m talking to teens and adolescents today, I like to talk to them about the intersection of mental health and substance use. Teens today are really concerned about their own mental health and wellness and also that of their friends and peers. And so when I explained to them that there’s a relationship between mental health and substance use and that relationship is bi-directional, that really interests them. So it’s an introduction to the topic in a way that’s meaningful to youth today. And so who use substances are a greater risk for mental health problems and mental health people with mental health problems are at greater risk for substance use. That’s what it means to be bi-directional. And I have a study here that I like to talk about, which is a study from students in Massachusetts and it was about 15,000 students. And what they showed is that each of alcohol, cannabis and nicotine was associated with an increased prevalence of suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety symptoms, psychotic experiences, and ADHD symptoms. And that’s really important again to realize that the things that the youth are concerned about are associated with those substances.
When I introduced myself, I talked about one choice for health. And when I say one choice, what I mean is no use of any alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, THC, or other drugs by youth under the age of 21 for reasons of health. And that’s a lot of words, but what I mean by that is drug-free. But if I say drug-free, you might not think, is alcohol a drug? Is nicotine a drug? Is THC a drug? You know, we can have a lot of debates about that.
And I want to make sure at least at one point that we’re really clear that we’re talking about all of those substances that can hijack the brain’s natural dopamine reward center. And so at least at some point, we need to articulate that to be sure we’re all on the same page. And this is a health standard that is similar to other health standards that we’re really comfortable using, like saying always wear your seatbelt or wear a bicycle helmet or eat healthy foods or exercise regularly.
These are things we’re comfortable saying because we know that they’re backed by science and research. And so I want to encourage you to feel comfortable with this no use message because it’s also backed by science and research. And it gives people again that information they need to protect their own health.
Okay, I have to butt in. That is so cool. When you just made it, like you just said, it’s kind of like a seatbelt. My mouth kind of dropped open because you’re right. No one thinks of it like that. They’re like, no, this is such an intricate topic and there’s so many different substances. But by saying, no, it’s one choice to protect your health from all these things that do the same thing, hijack the reward center of your brain. Wow.
That simplifies things and it makes it easier to share. And it makes it more convicting on my end to say, you’re right. I’m not, I’m not coming in with a message of, well, maybe you use this or maybe you don’t, or what a lot of adults tend to think. Well, I did it. I did this one and I’m okay. And it makes all this gray area in which we have no control over the outcome then, because we’re saying, well, if I allow them to do this, they’ll be good. we don’t know that. So the one choice is, I’m in it. This is so cool.
The One Choice Message Explained
The other thing I like about the seatbelt analogy is that it can also be something you can understand that it’s not like a purity test. It’s not like you’re either a seatbelt wearer or not. So you can learn new information about the importance of reading, wearing seatbelts and start wearing seatbelts. And that’s the same thing with substance use. It’s not like you’re all or nothing. Like if you’ve used substances one so you have one beer or smoked one joint or something like that. Suddenly you’re in this bad category that this is not a judgment this is a safety message and When you when you have that information you can make smarter healthier choices for yourself
That’s so good.
And so now I’m just going to talk briefly about why we call it one choice, because I feel like we still haven’t really explained that. And that’s because we have learned that for teens, all substance use is connected. So that means the use of one substance is dramatically related to an increased risk of using other substances. And so if you use one substance like alcohol, your risk of using marijuana is much higher for youth. And we learned that by looking at data from the SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which is that big national data set of like 17,000 youth ages 12 to 17. And when we looked at that data in a way that hadn’t been looked at before, when I say we, I mean, IBH, we divided that group of 12 to 17 year olds by this question, have you used any alcohol in the past month? And if they said no, that are on one side of the graph. And if we said, yes, they’re on the other side of the graph. And this is where I get to a little shortcut where I say little bars, big bars.
So if you’re looking at a bar graph and you look at that group that said, no, I did not use any alcohol in the past month, what you’re going to see is little bars on that side that are representing how likely they are to have been using marijuana, cigarettes, and nicotine or other illicit drugs and they’re very unlikely, if they didn’t use alcohol in the past month, they’re very unlikely to have used those other substances. But if they said, yes, I did use alcohol in the past month, all of a sudden you have big bars and those big bars represent much more likely to be using marijuana, other illicit drugs and nicotine. And with this, we even have more details if they’re reporting binge drinking or heavy alcohol use. And those of us that work with teens know that unfortunately,
Binge drinking is very common in this population and heavy alcohol use just means repeat binge drinking. So if you binge drink every weekend, that puts you in that category and your risk of using other substances is way higher if you’re in those categories of yes, alcohol use in the past month. And then we looked at that data in a similar way, but asking the question about past month marijuana use.
So we put them all together again and then divided them into the groups. Did you use any marijuana in the past month? And if they said no, what you would see is little bars, which means they’re very unlikely to use alcohol, other illicit drugs or nicotine. But if they said yes to past month marijuana use, big bars, much more likely to be using all of those substances or any of those substances. And we did it one more time with cigarettes or nicotine use.
And we saw the same thing. If they did not use any cigarettes, little bars, unlikely to be using other substances. And if they said yes to nicotine, big bars, much more likely to be using other substances. And what this shows us is for youth, all substance use is connected. They start, of course, with one substance. And the reason we went with these three is these are kind of the three most commonly used substances by this age group. But what you see is if they use one substance, then all of a sudden they have all those questions. What about this other substance? What about this other delivery method of this substance? What about using it in different situations? All those questions are now open to them. But if they’ve made a choice for themselves already, I’m making the decision not to use, then that’s the one choice that they’ve made for their health.
Wow. And that makes it simpler. Life’s a little bit more simple when you have that guideline to go by versus, yeah, well, what happens in this scenario? And in case someone’s listening, you just showed some incredible graphs and you have that data on your website as well.
Absolutely. The data is on our website, the pictures. I do think a picture can be worth a thousand words. Not only is it available for you to see, but you can download it, you can use it. It’s available to you to use because I do think it really helps people to understand what we’re talking about in terms of the patterns of youth substance use. Also, when you think about, again, that seatbelt analogy, which we keep going back to, you know how we can say, only wear your seatbelt when you’re in the front seat or only wear your seatbelt if it’s dark or only wear your seatbelt if you’re on the highway. I mean, you could say those things, but it’s not really the essential message, which is always wear your seatbelt. And here’s the data to support that.
Yeah, that’s good. So if you’re listening and you’re back in the office or something, go to onechoiceprevention.org, put those in your slides because young people also want to see the data. They don’t want to be bored by data or over, you know, saturated with it, but they want to actually look up and validate what you tell them. So in order to help them with that believability factor and to show the risk factors and stuff like that, if you want to say, hey, if you use this, you’re more likely to use this. And they’ve in their mind most likely said, I don’t want to use that stuff. Then by showing that visual, you’re helping to prove it and show that you’re a trusted source. And then you can move on to the other fun stuff too, like the metaphor, like the story, whatever your other supporting materials are.
Celebrating Non-Use Among Youth
100% and I actually think that the students often tell me, yeah, that’s right. Like they’ll see that with their own friends. They’re like, this friend just was vaping and seemed like that was all they were doing was vaping. And within a fairly short period of time, they’re like, my gosh, this friend is now doing XYZ. And they realized they see this in their own peers, how that spreads from one substance to more substances. Yeah.
So when I talk to adults, they sometimes are like, well, that’s all well and good, but substance use in youth is inevitable. It’s a normal part of growing up. It’s experimentation is the standard for adolescents. We have all sorts of language and concepts that are centering around normalizing youth substance use. And I want to counter that and say, you know what? Youth substance use is not inevitable.
And we have the data to prove it. So here we go back into some data. So we at IVH took some other big national data. This is the monitoring the future data, which is, again, the way our country keeps track of youth substance use. And they’ve been doing it since the mid 1970s. And what’s amazing about this is that we can see that there is an increasing number of youth that are choosing not to use any substances. So when we asked of the data, said, what percentage of youth, we took high school seniors, we went to the top age group that this data is collected for, and we said, what percentage of high school seniors don’t use alcohol, cigarettes, nicotine, marijuana, or other illicit drugs? And we divided that then we looked further at that by lifetime non-use and past month non-use.
And when you look at lifetime non-use, back in the 70s and 80s, it was somewhere around 3 to 5% of high school seniors had not used any of those substances in their lifetime, which means that 95% to 97% of high school seniors had used some kind of substance in their lifetime. In other words, it basically was everybody. But if you look, I know, wow, right? Wow.
And so sometimes when I talk to adults, I’m like, yeah, that’s what your lived experiences. So that’s why you think everybody uses. But it’s not like that anymore. If we look now, it’s over a third. It’s about 36% of high school seniors have never in their lifetime used any of those substances, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, or any other illicit drugs. That’s amazing. That’s completely unrecognized in terms of the number of people even more interested in some ways in this past month non-use because remember how I said that you might not have worn your seatbelt once and that doesn’t mean you’re like can’t wear your seatbelt. I mean that’s not the way health standards work and so past month non-use is really a better hallmark in a way in terms of what’s happening and back in the 70s and 80s it was somewhere around 16 to 25 percent of high school seniors had not used a substance in the past month.
So 75 to 80% or more were had used in the past month. Now that number is over 60%. Over 60% of high school seniors have not used any substance in the past month. This is so exciting. And what this represents is years and years of work in primary prevention at local levels, at national levels getting this information out there about substance use. And I really like to think of every one of those people who’s not using is not using for a personal reason. They have a reason why they’re not using and they need to be celebrated. So I wanna celebrate all 60 % of those people or all 30% whichever group you’re talking to.
Yes, this is so cool.
So cool. just to let you know that data does exist for 10th grade and 8th grade as well. And sometimes that’s helpful so that you can kind of think about what is that experience of the audience that you’re talking to if you’re talking to a general 10th grade audience or a general 8th grade audience to just know what those kind of numbers are. And we’ve got all of that. When we’re talking about this kind of prevention messaging, sometimes again, people think, this is just primary prevention for like third graders. And I want to point out again, it’s a health message. So it’s appropriate for all audiences. It’s appropriate for teens who’ve never used any substances, as we’ve said, it’s great to reinforce that and recognize and celebrate that.
But it’s also appropriate for teens who have used, who have used a little or even a lot teaching them, giving them the education, giving them the data and science, talking to them about brain protection. All of that’s really valuable, so it’s appropriate for that group. And it’s even appropriate for people who have problems associated with their substance use or who are in early or long-term recovery. Non-use as a health standard is completely consistent with early and long-term recovery. So it’s a public health approach, not a purity message. I really just want to always keep driving that home that this is not like some line if you cross that you can’t be focused on your health. Any of us can always be focused on our health.
That’s so good.
I’ve brought up a couple of times this idea of it being kind of an individual choice. And I think that’s really important to recognize that the non-using teens aren’t doing that by accident, or they’re not doing it because they haven’t had the opportunity. They’ve made a choice and they may not know about one choice, they don’t have that language, but they have a reason. And so one of the people we work with out of Rye, New York, they came up with this idea of this mosaic wall. And now it’s been used by people all over the country because it’s just a really easy project to do. And it has these printable tiles.
So they’re colorful printable tiles. I’m calling them tiles, but they’re really like a little square piece of paper that says, am one. I make one choice to be drug free because and then it has a blank space for them to write their reasons why. And I love this because youth of all ages, they always have a reason. They always have a reason that’s personal to them. Like maybe they’re an athlete and they want to protect their athletic body, or maybe they have aspirational dreams. They want to be a doctor or an astronaut and they want to protect their brain health for that. Or maybe they’re someone who has a family member who has really significant substance use problems and they’re like, I really need to protect my brain because of my family history.
And what I love about this is it gets everybody a chance anonymously to think about what’s my why, why do I making this choice? And by writing it down again, it really validates and supports that person in their choice. But then seeing all those other ones up there on the wall can make you realize that third of people who have not used in their lifetime seniors and also that 60 % who have not used in the past month and realize you’re not alone because sometimes it can feel like everybody’s using, everybody’s using, but they’re not all using. And so it’s really an extremely great visual way of showing that to youth and to the adults that are caring for them. And this is one of the things that’s available on our website and it can be personalized with your information on it. can see that there’s a place on the bottom corner where it could have your organization on it, which I think is really fun.
That’s so cool. I need to tell you, I’m going to be on your website using some of this information and using these because you’re so correct in that peer influence is so effective. And so that activity has peer influence written all over it. And I know for a fact from doing our program that when we’re done, the best piece of feedback that fills up my heart is I usually get two responses is the student who’s making good choices, they come up and say, I’m so glad you were here because sometimes I feel like I’m the only one. And it was nice to know that there are so many people out there like me and I’m not alone. And maybe if I can stand out, you we can build community. like that’s number one, probably the most common thing. And it just fills my heart because that’s what I wish I would have known. The second one would be around the students that, you know, Like I said, hey, I’ve made a mistake. I started using this, this vaping product and now I’m getting addicted, but I want to quit. And although our organization is not the provider to help them quit, I realized that that was a moment when they realized, this isn’t the only way to deal with this problem or this situation. I can, I can get help and I’m not going to be alone when I do because it’s kind of like turning social norms into social proof is the data helps turn that into proof. And then for us, the stories of students having fun, making friends and feeling good without substances is that cool proof that they really need to know that it’s about them, it’s about their future. And to hear their friends saying that, whether it’s a tile that y’all have or stories and events, like that is so powerful.
Engaging Adults in Prevention
Yes, really, I think it is, and it gives them this opportunity to hear everybody else’s stories and realize that they belong. They belong on the wall, regardless of what their story is and their history. So that’s a little bit about talking to youth. I’m gonna shift a little bit to talking to those adults because the adults can be a challenge. I think about this often because it was different when they were youth. And sometimes I’ll show them that graph and be like, where were you when you were a senior in high school? And see what that landscape looked like to them. Often what I hear from adults is things like what you referenced is like I used when I was young and I was fine. Or like there’s no history of addiction in my family. So I don’t need to worry about this.
Or I’m not really worried if they’re just drinking beer. I’m not really worried if they’re just smoking pot. I’m not really worried if they’re just vaping. And so this is an opportunity to talk to those adults about why that’s not actually in their best interest to think that way. And one of the things is that connectivity of substance use to think like, yes, you’re not worried about beer, but look how it’s correlated with the use of other substances. So you’re not worried about that, but you’re very worried about the opioid epidemic. And here’s why you need to be concerned. But also in terms of the commercialization today, the potency, the variety of drugs, the delivery devices, they are all kind of bigger, better, faster, more than they were in the past. And that puts our youth and that developing brain at really significant risk. And the adults need that information too. Yeah.
I want to point out that adults also can get this information from the pediatricians and that this non-use message is completely consistent with what the American Academy of Pediatrics says. And so we’re not the only ones saying like this is the message we need to be giving our youth is that non-use should be the norm. We at IBH and with One Choice Prevention we work with prevention organizations all across the country and often they say to us, I need something to hand out to parents or I need something to show to parents or guide parents to. And so we created a bunch of pamphlets.
And an example of that is one that we have called the One Choice Five, which is these five talking points that I’ve already told you today but on a one page handout that you can literally hand out at a meeting or you can have on your information table or you can have a QR code to point people to so that when you have an opportunity to get this information to parents, you can get them this information of how they can use their power as a parent or as a caregiver. Sometimes I think adults think the kids won’t listen to me and the kids do listen. And so making sure those adults trusted adults have accurate information, have the science and feel comfortable talking about it is really important to us.
And then we have a full one-choice toolkit for people who are working in the field of prevention. If this is your thing, this is what you do, that’s, you of course, you’re speaking our language and all we want to do is help you. That’s the point of our organization is to help you do the amazing work that you’re doing. The key of our message is to encourage prevention programs and initiatives to do these things to explicitly state the goal of non-use, to educate youth on the vulnerability of the developing brain, to encourage youth leadership in creation and implementation of programming. Again, give the microphone to the youth. They are the best carriers of this message. Include a focus on protecting mental health. Explain the concept of commercialized recreational pharmacology. I love that term. That’s something that my father, our president, coined and it’s really valuable. The youth today do not like the idea that big business is basically sacrificing their health for the business’s profit, not a big seller among youth. And also, we really want to do what you’re talking about, utilize positive messaging rather than scare tactics. We really want to work on that positive social norm. We have on our website tons of examples of things that other programs have done with our data in order to have easy things to use for things like National Drug Facts Week or another one that we have that was teen to teen holiday prevention messaging. And all of that is available for you to download to use to brand with your prevention organization or whatever that is. Our job is to make your job easier. That’s what we do.
I did reference that one choice community and I really wanna highlight that for all of us. We have organizations, I think it’s more than 50 all across the country. And these are organizations that have joined us that use our materials and then also join us on four times a year we have Zoom calls where anybody who wants to can join us and we usually we’ll have a presentation of a community that’s done something really interesting or creative and we bounce ideas off of each other and we talk about challenges and we also brainstorm things that we’re like, I need more information on this or I need a handout for that or how have you managed questions about XYZ? And so it’s so great to brainstorm together because you know how I said the kids can feel alone, the non-using kids can feel alone but also the prevention educators can feel alone.
Sometimes you kind of feel like you’re the only voice in the wilderness. And one of the things that’s really fun about the One Choice community is it gives us a chance to kind of meet with our own peers and talk about that. And so just to remind you that One Choice is a message that is supporting and not competing with other prevention initiatives. And it’s inclusive of all audiences, those who’ve never used and those who have used and those who are seeking recovery. It goes across the spectrum. And that it’s really a great opportunity to integrate one choice messaging into youth leadership because the youth are so powerful and their reasons why are inspiring to us adults. So that is kind of all of my stuff in like a super nutshell. I love to talk about this and I can talk about this for hours and hours, but that’s the thumbnail.
Building Community and Support
Thank you, Dr. Caroline. That was so helpful for me as someone who is doing this every single week, working with students, knowing that I’m saying some of the same things, but as you said, like this isn’t to compete with one another. Having those materials will help us become more effective in reaching young people, showing the data and the science and giving them opportunities to lead because I mean, you said it, they come up with incredible ideas. They know how to reach their friends. They speak the same language. Sometimes as adults, I don’t understand what they’re saying, but they do. They know how to reach each other. And if we can develop leadership skills and equip these students to make a difference, we are going to see amazing things happen in our culture. And you showed that graph. We can do our work together of non-youths and how back in the day, quote, right, 3% of high school students had never used and now it’s 10 times, 30%, 36%. Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s so encouraging. And for students to know that they can be a part of that and that they’re not creating the momentum, like it’s there, you can just join. It kind of takes this weight off of our shoulders so that we know it’s not us against the world. Like prevention is taking the science, the data, and these amazing people and friends that we meet, and we’re running in the same direction, not by ourselves, but on the backs of all the people that came before us. So this was a super encouraging episode for me.
Yay, that’s what I wanted. And I wanted to add one little more thing about commonality between you and I, and that is our interest in what happens in college. And we think about these are high school seniors I’m talking about. And so those are the college freshmen. And sometimes people will do the same thing and they’ll say, all college students use. And I’m like, wait, think about who just went to college. And so we don’t want to do that social norming of saying all college students use lots of college students don’t use. so this messaging again, I keep talking about across the spectrum of care, but I even want to say across the ages, this is appropriate for a second grader and this is appropriate for a college student.
Yes. I told you my story, right? I heard that social norm, decided to test it, and it’s true. Even college students are looking for ways to make friends and have fun and feel good without using substances. And what a great message for all age groups. And we can’t start early enough with with hoping skills and building protective factors and all those things. So, Dr. Caroline, you gave us your website, onechoiceprevention.org.
So we know how to get a hold of you. We can get materials from you. You can brand them to our organization and coalitions. You’re doing great advocacy work. You’re that partner, that silent partner who’s doing all the fun numbers games because that’s fun to you and maybe not for us. So is there anything else that we need to know before we say goodbye?
Only how much I admire all the people who are out there actually doing the work I mean, I think that’s what I always want to say like you guys are my heroes. So keep up the good work.
Couldn’t say it better. Y’all, thank you for listening to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. We will see you next Monday for the next episode.
