Valerie Hall firmly believes in the power of Red Ribbon Week. Hall, Interim Dean of Students and Criminal Justice Professor at Florida Memorial University (FMU), is passionate about delivering the “Love Yourself. Be Drug Free.” message to FMU’s diverse student population in her classroom and school wide. With the full support of FMU President Dr. Rosalyn Clark-Artis, Hall organized Red Ribbon Week activities for students at the University. No stranger to prevention, Dean Hall has worked with Informed Families for the last seven years to deliver healthy messages to youth in the South Florida Community.  

The 2014 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey reveals that 85% of middle school students and nearly 63% of high school students are not current users of alcohol, tobacco, or illicit substances including marijuana, inhalants, club drugs, as well as the non-medical use of over-the-counter or prescription pharmaceuticals. Thus, 3 out of 4 Florida students in grades 6-12 don’t drink alcohol nor use drugs.

The best news is that the 2014 results continue a 10-year trend of alcohol and drug-free youth rising 12.5 percentage points for middle schoolers and 10.7 percentage points among high school students since 2004. Alcohol use declined 4.1 percentage points and cigarette smoking decreased 1.7 points between 2012 and 2014. Use of marijuana and all other drugs stabilized with no statistically significant increases across the same two years.

The Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey was administered in February 2014 with a sample size of 65,917 sixth through twelfth grade students from all 67 Florida counties. The margin of error is less than 1 percentage point for middle and high school prevalence rates.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve heard something really surprising from parents. Some parents have told us that either: