Red Ribbon Week, an annual campaign to educate communities on the risks of drug and alcohol use, runs from October 23rd to the 31st. Students engage through dress-up themes, special activities at school, and by wearing red wristbands to show they choose to live...
In October 2022, the Wellness & Prevention Coalition started a new five year cycle of funding through the Office of National Drug Control Policy Drug-Free Communities grant program. This competitive award will support collaborative work across sectors in the San...
Substance use prevention has been around for a long time. From the Just Say No campaign of the 80s to the OC Sheriff’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program that provides education to school age youth on the dangers of drugs. What we have learned is that...
There has been an alarming rise in the cases of injuries and deaths associated with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, which has become part of a growing public health crisis in our community and across the nation. Deaths from overdoses reached a staggering 107,622 in...
The Wellness & Prevention Coalition joined 645 local coalitions across the nation as a federally funded Drug-Free Communities (DFC) coalition through the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The Wellness & Prevention Coalition was a...
By Amy Neville In the last several years, fentanyl has been infiltrating the illicit drug market. For most of us who don’t use drugs recreationally, this seems like a benign fact. For parents with adolescents, the danger may still seem like a very distant...
For the first time since the closures in 2020, San Clemente High School’s Wellness & Prevention Coalition (WPC) had the opportunity to attend CADCA’s National Leadership Forum in National Harbor, Maryland. With funding from the Centers for Disease Control Drug...
Have you lost a loved one to a drug or illicit substance overdose? You are not alone. Preliminary data released by the CDC show that drug overdose deaths reached a record high of 93,331 in 2020. While these estimates are not final, this number is 20,000 deaths higher...
A recent study published in the Journal of American Public Health reports that 67.7% of youth surveyed reported decreasing or quitting e-cigarette use during the COVID-19 pandemic. This promising trend comes only two years after the US Surgeon General declared youth...
I recently lost a very close family friend to an accidental drug overdose. He is not the first, but I hope the work I do will ensure that he is the last. I have lost too many friends to mental illness and addiction. I can’t quite put my finger on the cause of this...