More than 40 years after former First Lady Nancy Reagan launched her famous “Just Say No” advertising campaign, Texas and the rest of the nation are once again trying to combat youth drug use through public school awareness programs.
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education initiative– commonly known as D.A.R.E.–was introduced to schools in the early 1980s. It was designed to equip elementary and high school students with the skills to avoid drugs by standing up to peer pressure, but the program began to fade out of school districts across the country by the middle of the 2000s due to lack of results. This hasn’t stopped other anti- drug programs from taking its place over the years as the country constantly scrambles to figure out how to solve the problem of youth drug abuse.
Now, Texas is about to launch its latest anti-drug program in schools. Earlier this year, the state launched “One Pill Kills,” a multimedia campaign designed to warn Texans about the unlawful use of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Reinforcing that message is a new law passed this year–House Bill 3908–which requires fentanyl and drug abuse prevention instruction in Texas public schools for grades six through 12.
