National Drug Facts Week: Linking Teens with Scientific Experts

Now more than ever, teens have quick and easy access to Internet, TV, music and other media communicating potentially dangerous drug myths. Coupled with pressure from peer groups, substance use is often cast as a cool or inevitable part of growing up.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) aims to counteract these myths during National Drug Facts Week, coming up Jan. 26 through Feb. 1, 2015.

During this week, we completely support the effort of National Drug Facts Week to bring together teens with addiction scientists or health experts to discuss drug use and addiction. The opportunity to host an event in your community is open to a variety of organizations, including schools, community groups, sports clubs, and hospitals. These discussions are designed to shatter drug myths by connecting teens with experts and educating teens about the impact of substance use.

NIDA offers all the tools to create an event, publicize it, find an expert and obtain educational information to cover at your event.

The website is designed with teen-friendly language and graphics to make it easy for teens to also take action and host events among their peers.

To make events engaging, NIDA will arm you with helpful, interactive tools:

Event holders who register online will receive free booklets with science-based facts about drugs, including one of NIDA’s most in-demand teen publications, “Drugs: Shatter the Myths.” Also this year, NIDA offers three interactive tools that can be projected on large screens at events or used with mobile devices:

• The online 2015 National Drug IQ Challenge is a 12-question multiple choice quiz that teens and adults can take to test their knowledge about drugs. Past-year challenges can be found here. The 2015 challenge will be posted when it is available.

• Choose Your Path interactive videos encourage students to make decisions about the abuse of prescription drugs using scenarios from their everyday lives.

• The interactive version of the popular poster “Drugs + Your Body: It Isn’t Pretty” highlights the effects drugs have on the teen body. It was created in partnership with Scholastic.

Register your event and share the news with your networks!