Middle school students deliver drug-free message

The message to stay away from drugs is sometimes heard more clearly when delivered by your peers, Trailridge Middle School eighth-grader Courtney Poston said.

“It helps to hear it from students your own age because you don’t tend to listen to adults as much as kids your own age,” Courtney said.

With this idea in mind, many of the activities during Red Ribbon Week this week at Trailridge will be led by students. Red Ribbon Week is a national drug prevention promotion.

With help from a grant from the Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition, Trailridge students created artwork and will stage a play to help encourage a drug-free lifestyle.

To have students lead the annual Red Ribbon Week observation is important because many times students have to make decisions about substance abuse under the influence of peers, Trailridge Drug Free Club sponsor Brenda Stolle said.

On Friday, students in a performance theater class will stage “Addict” by Jerome McDonough for the student body. The production includes a series of monologues that detail the experiences of young people who tried drugs and ended up in trouble.

Eighth-grader Milad Ghasempour plays a character with a heroin addiction. It has been a challenge as an actor to play someone who is “the total opposite” of who he is, he said.

“I’ve learned how drugs are very dangerous because you can’t predict the side effects of it,” he said. “I think it will give (students) a good idea about what it is like so they will not get into drugs now. I hope it does have some impact. When it comes from a peer, you can relate to them.”

Robin Willard, the theater class instructor, said she knew the play’s serious content would be a challenge for the performers.

Though the content may seem somewhat advanced for young students, the purpose of the information is to keep students safe, Willard said.

“It is dangerous because if they do not know what the consequences are, they can get themselves into situations,” Willard said.

The play will be performed for the 540-member student body at the school, 7500 Quivira Road, Overland Park.

Eighth-grader Shea Drummond plays a character who is pressured into taking drugs by a boy. She later suffers harsh consequences.

“I want (other students) to know that if you take drugs there is a chance of dying and I would think they would not want to die young,” Shea said.

The $1,250 grant from the Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition helped fund some of the play production. It also helped fund the reproduction of student art related to drug-free messages. Some student art has been reproduced on canvases that will hang permanently in the school, Stolle said.

The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Found that 21 percent of Kansas high school students smoke, a rate that has not decreased since 2002. Alcohol is the most likely substance to be abused by children and youth in the area, with 42 percent of sixth-, eighth-, 10^th- and 12^th-graders having reported they used alcohol at least once in their lifetime, according to the 2008-09 Johnson County Communities that Care survey.

While it is difficult to quantify exactly how successful the student-driven message will be to counteract such statistics, Stolle said it is still a good message for students to hear as they make decisions about the future.

“The students will sign a pledge (to not do drugs),” she said. “It’s not just the message to send to peers, but a message they make to themselves that is important.”

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