Your Future Is Key, So Stay Drug Free™ is the 2017 National Red Ribbon Week theme and the message being delivered to millions of students and families across America October 23-31.

Given the current opioid epidemic facing our country, Red Ribbon Week is more important than ever. It is an opportunity to spread awareness and educate children and families about the consequences of drug use and the importance of a drug free lifestyle.

Join us in spreading this important message:

Kids these days...

16 Florida Schools and Organizations Named Informed Families All Stars for Their Efforts to Prevent Teen Drug and Alcohol Use

Informed Families, a Florida nonprofit devoted to helping kids grow up safe, healthy and drug-free, is proud to announce its All Star Schools for 2017. Sixteen Florida schools and organizations received the honor for this school year.

Informed Families created the All Star program to recognize the success schools and community organizations are achieving through drug and alcohol prevention efforts. To be eligible for All Star status, schools must complete the four prevention campaigns Informed Families sponsors throughout the school year:

What is student achievement? Ask different people and you get different answers.

Some might define student achievement in purely academic terms: test scores, grades, the quality of colleges that teens attend after they graduate high school. 

Others might look beyond grades to things such as varsity letters, perfect attendance or simply earning the diploma.

Still others take a different tack on student achievement: community service, successfully participating in anti-drinking or anti-bullying campaigns, organizing a safe and fun prom.

No matter how you define student achievement (and, indeed, many educators define it in multiple ways), highlighting success should be a focus in every school and every school district. Here are five reasons why:

Another school year has concluded in Florida - and students around the state are graduating high school or moving on to the next grade. The end of the school year also means something else near and dear to Informed Families: the selection of the All Star Schools.

What a year 2016-17 was for us! We bestowed All Star status upon 16 schools and organizations. Moreover, we worked with schools in all 67 counties across the state to implement anti-drug and anti-alcohol campaigns and provide information to help teens makes smart choices and stay safe.

Anti-drug messages aimed at kids are nothing new—most of today’s parents were children themselves when the first wave of “Just Say No” campaigns were launched in the 1980s. And in the last three decades or so, the efforts of parents, educators, communities and organizations such as Informed Families have made a noticeable and welcome dent in the problem of teen drug use. 

Still, much work still needs to be done to keep our kids safe and inspire them to make smart choices. The fact that teen drug use remains a problem might lead many to ask why, after all the campaigns, warnings and anti-drug efforts, do kids still choose to use drugs. The tempting answer might be, “They’re teens and don’t know better.” However, it’s not that simple. Below, we detail a variety of reasons why some kids use drugs in 2017.

Summertime! And for Florida parents with teens, often, the livin’ is not easy….

According to SAMHSA, more teenagers start drinking and smoking cigarettes and marijuana in June and July than in any other months. Parents, who are challenged enough to keep tabs of where their kids are and what they are doing between September and May, find it especially difficult to do so in June, July and August.

Raising in excess of $200,000 to support Informed Families' programs to help kids grow up safe, healthy and drug free across Florida, the 32nd Annual Informed Families Dinner at Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant was a tremendous success. Long-time supporters and event co-chairs Pam Giganti-Bunge & Alfred Bunge and Dr. Linda Neider & Dr. Paul Sugrue pulled out all the stops to make the dinner the best yet.

This year’s theme was "Communities that Care," reflecting the importance and power of communities in working together to stop the spread of drug use, especially the devastating current opioid epidemic.

Aside from Informed Families, the big winner of the night was dedicated supporter Sara Herald, who won the raffle for dinner for 20 guests at Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant. Guests enjoyed a wonderful street party prior to enjoying Joe's delicious stone crabs among old friends.

Informed Families has partnered with Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant for over three decades to help keep children in South Florida and beyond safe, healthy and drug free. Many of the annual event attendees have regularly attended since the first dinner in 1985.

Parents, schools and communities often are hyper-focused on alcohol and illegal drug use, and rightfully so—these substances, when abused, can cause great harm to teenagers. Yet, this emphasis often causes parents to overlook another problem: over-the-counter (OTC) drug abuse.

When not able to secure booze or harder drugs such as marijuana or prescription pills, teens might turn to OTC medications to attempt a high. Or, kids might try chugging cough syrup or taking motion sickness pills thinking neither can hurt them; after all, these are medicines you can buy at the store.

The concept of student success often gets lost in the perception of student failures. Too often, the attitude of some people, many of whom do not currently have teens themselves, is that high schoolers are collectively disappointing parents, communities and society at large. This negativity isn’t new—just about every generation has engaged in its own “These kids!” moment—but in 2017, with social media and the digital age, it seems louder and our students definitely hear it.

Unfortunately, that message can discourage teens from striving for success and then more success. Little victories are overlooked; bigger accomplishments are diminished. For example, alcohol usage rates have been dropping for teens for a couple decades now, as much as a 60 percent difference since its peak in the 1990s. Yet the mistaken belief of many people is that high school students are out of control with drinking and parties.