Advocates on front lines of opioid crisis recommend Botvin LifeSkills to replace DARE
Channel: Botvin LifeSkills
Date: 2017-11-03

In declaring a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic, President Trump called for the creation of a national media campaign to reduce drug use among young people. As part of PBS NewsHour's “America Addicted” series, William Brangham speaks with Gary Mendell of Shatterproof about what should be done to prevent addiction.

Gary Mendell: “But I also want to add, there are — our National Institutes of Health have given out grants to researchers all across the country, and those researchers have developed programs that have proven to reduce the number of our teens who use drugs and ultimately become addicted.
 
For example, there is a program called [Botvin] LifeSkills that’s in about 3 or 4 percent of our middle schools. It has great research behind it that shows that it works.
 
Alternatively, there’s research that shows that DARE, which is in about 75 percent of our middle schools, doesn’t work.
 
So, if we can move our middle schools from [to] using LifeSkills, instead of DARE, the opportunity to reduce the number of our teens who ever use drugs is substantially higher.”

visit www.lifeskillstraining.com to learn more