Have you heard the good news? Together, we’ve made a positive difference in our children’s lives. We have much to celebrate thanks to you. Teen alcohol use has significantly decreased over the past five years, according to the California Healthy Kids Survey. This...
Drug Prevention
What Red Ribbon Week Means To Me: A High School Student’s Perspective
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...
What’s New With the Wellness & Prevention Coalition
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...
AIM High Works to Prevent Substance Misuse Among Teens
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...
Fentanyl: A National and Local Public Health Crisis
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...
Wellness & Prevention Coalition Receives Funding to Support Youth Well-Being in San Clemente
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...
Adolescents and the Dangers of Illicit Fentanyl
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...
Wellness & Prevention Youth Coalition Visits Washington, DC
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...
Stopping Overdose Deaths in Our Communities
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...
Downward Trend in Youth Vaping: How can we sustain it?
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...