Hawthorne teaches Towards No Drug Abuse program to 7th graders
Project TND is an effective drug abuse prevention program that targets senior high school-age youth. It was developed by Steve Sussman, Ph.D. and staff at the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Although the program was designed to teach high school students, it was decided it would be more effective taught to the junior high students to catch it early. For young teens, comprehensive social influences drug abuse prevention programs have been found to be most effective. These programs rely on the assumption that small minority of youth is experimenting with drug use, and the majority opinion, when disclosed, will produce a preventive impact. Mineral County was granted less money this year than in the past, so there have been some cut backs, but we are still proceeding ahead. And managing to teach the program.