smokeSCREEN

A best practice video game for preventing youth smoking and vaping that is most age-appropriate for middle school students or students ages 10 – 16. It can be used to compliment health curriculums. It’s free and good for online learning and takes about 2 hours for students to complete, however does not need to be completed all at once.

The Dangers of Vaping:
NIDA Scholastic Activity

Interactive activity for students to click on different images to find out facts about the dangers of vaping.

NIDA Kahoot!

Kahoot! games from NIDA test teens’ knowledge on how drugs and alcohol affect young people’s brains and bodies. These short interactive games teach scientific facts about vaping, marijuana, stimulants, prescription drugs, how drug use affects the brain, and more.
Kahoot! Game: “Keeping Prescriptions Safe: The Facts About Prescription Drug Misuse”
Kahoot! Game: “E-cigs, Vapes, and Mods: What Do You Know About Vaping?”
Kahoot! Game: “Marijuana Myths: Can You Tell Fact from Fiction?”
Kahoot! Game: “Substance Use and Your Brain: Do You Know The Facts?”
Kahoot! Game: “Drugs and Alcohol Can You Tell Fact from Fiction?”

CATCH My Breath

CATCH My Breath is a youth e-cigarette, JUUL, and vape prevention program specific to grades 5-12. This vaping prevention program is free to schools has shown to significantly reduce the likelihood of vaping in the year following program implementation. There are four 30-40 minute lessons in versions for grade 5, grade 6, grades 7-8, and grades 9-12.

Stanford Medicine Tobacco Prevention Toolkit: Kahoots/Quizzes

Kahoots are online quizzes that are interactive and easy to use. There are plenty to choose from when teaching about the harms of using tobacco/nicotine including topics on: Intro to E-Cigarettes/Vapes, Health Effects of E-Cigarettes, E-Cig/Vape Pen 1010, E-Cigarette/Vape Pen Marketing, What’s in E-Cigarettes/E-Cigarette Chemicals, and Pod-Based E-Cigarettes (Juul, Suorin Phix, and Puff bar).

Stanford Medicine Tobacco Prevention Toolkit: A Self-Paced Online Course

A free, vaping prevention course to use for teaching and/or to assign to students to do on their own. The course provides students with an opportunity to learn about the following in a remote-learning environment: the health risks of using e-cigarettes/vapes, including Juul and Puff Bar, the increased risk of severe COVID-19 infection for those using e-cigarettes/vapes and the marketing tactics used by nicotine companies to target young people, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Truth Initiative: Black Lives/Black Lungs Short Film

“Black Lives / Black Lungs,” is a short film that shows how menthol tobacco ended up in black communities. The documentary explores the history, marketing tactics and impact of the tobacco industry targeting African-Americans with menthol tobacco products.
Read The Truth Article

Drug Facts Challenge: NIDA

Drug Facts Challenge! is a Jeopardy-style game based on scientific findings developed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The questions and answers are based on the NIDA for Teens Drug Facts pages on the Brain and Addiction, Marijuana, Prescription Drugs, Tobacco/Nicotine/E-Cigs and Inhalants.

Play as a group or have students play individually. Allow time for teens to review the NIDA for Teens Drug Facts prior to playing. You can print out or have teens access the pages online.

Nuggets: Animated YouTube Video on Addiction

The video “Nuggets” follows a kiwi who encounters nuggets as it walks down a path. As it indulges in a nugget, the kiwi experiences a blissful high, causing the kiwi to feel as if it is flying in the air. The kiwi progressively experiences diminishing returns with each nugget it consumes, with subsequent flights becoming shorter and the falls back down to the ground becoming harsher. As the kiwi struggles with this, the white background also becomes darker and darker. The short video portrays the nugget as a metaphor for some sort of drug, with the story itself functioning as an allegory for the stages of drug addiction.

Drugs & Your Body:
NIDA Scholastic Activity

Interactive activity for students to find out how drugs affect their body. “Drugs + Your Body: It Isn’t Pretty” is a science-based, web interactive for grades 6–12 that reinforces key facts of several educational resources devoted to the harmful health effects of drugs on the body. 

ASPIRE (A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience)

Evidence-based interactive program for teens which has interactive modules and quizzes (available in English and Spanish). The program delivers tobacco prevention education (including e-cigarettes, hookah, JUUL and synthetic marijuana) to teens and adolescents at a self-directed pace. Students also hear testimonials from former smokers, health care professionals, students and cancer survivors. ASPIRE aligns with national education standards as well.

Mouse Party Provided by Learn.Genetics

Look inside the brains of mice on drugs. Where applicable, this presentation primarily depicts how drugs interact with dopamine neurotransmitters because this website focuses on the brain’s reward pathway. Mouse Party is designed to provide a small glimpse into the chemical interactions at the synaptic level that cause the drug user to feel ‘high’.

Pure Rush: Drug Education Game

This interactive game provides a fun and engaging way to learn about the negative effects of drugs. Players navigate through four Australian landscapes avoiding illegal drugs and their effects to get to a music festival before tickets sell out. The game adopts a harm-reduction approach, educating students about the potential harms associated with drug use.

Coping Skills for Kids: Turning Negative Self-Talk into Positive Self-Talk

This podcast episode is all about turning negative self-talk into positive self-talk. It discusses two go-to strategies when working with clients to help manage the negative things they say to themselves. When negative thoughts fester, it can impact how we see ourselves and interact with the world. We want to focus on resilience and the positive aspects of who we are.

Challenging Negative Self-Talk

“As we go about our daily lives, we constantly think about and interpret the situations we find ourselves in. It is like we have an internal voice that determines how we perceive every situation. We call this inner voice our “self-talk,” and it includes our conscious thoughts as well as our unconscious assumptions and beliefs.”

2020 National Drug & Alcohol IQ Challenge

Test your knowledge by taking the interactive National Drug & Alcohol IQ Challenge quiz. There are 11 questions and 2 Brainiac questions. Quiz will take approximately 10 minutes.

Effects of Drug Use: Provided by Learn.Genetics

Short clips providing information on the effects of alcohol, cocaine, opioids, inhalants, marijuana, MDMA, methamphetamine, nicotine, psychedelics, GHB & Rohypnol, and dissociative drugs.

Teen Health: Substance Use and Abuse

A short video reviewing teen substance use, the brain, and their risk of addiction.

Addiction Neuroscience 101

This 22-minute-long video provides an overview of the neurobiology of addiction.

PBS Learning Media for Massachusetts Educators

This website provides educators with videos, games and activities aligned to state and national standards for students. These resources are organized by grade level and subject which includes health.

TED-Ed: How do cigarettes affect the body?

Cigarettes aren’t good for us. That’s hardly news — we’ve known about the dangers of smoking for decades. But how exactly do cigarettes harm us, and can our bodies recover if we stop? Krishna Sudhir details what happens when we smoke — and when we quit.
Lesson Plan

TED-Ed: How does alcohol make you drunk?

Ethanol: this molecule, made of little more than a few carbon atoms, is responsible for drunkenness. Often simply referred to as alcohol, ethanol is the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages. So how exactly does it cause drunkenness, and why does it have dramatically different effects on different people? Judy Grisel explores alcohol’s journey through the body.
Lesson Plan

TED-Ed: A brief history of alcohol

Trace the 7,000-year-old history of alcohol, from its first known origins in China to cultures all over the world fermenting their own drinks.

Influence of Peer Pressure on Adolescents and Substance Abuse

NIDA explores in this video the intriguing similarities between the processes of brain development and computer programming. The analogy helps us understand why toxic environmental factors like drugs, bullying, or lack of sleep can have such a long-lasting impact on a teenager’s life and can be used to empower your children or students with information they need make better decisions.
Article by Addiction Hope.

Drugs and Peer Pressure:
Spoken Word

“Shaiweh Chisholm, 21, from Salford, has created a spoken word video encouraging young people to have the confidence to say no to drugs.”

SportSmart Documentary

Created by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative, this 30-minute documentary highlights the risks associated with athletic injuries and prescribed medications.

Watch the SportSmart Documentary

“Should You Drink to That?”: Virtual Training

This virtual training created by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative provides information on the impact of alcohol and underage drinking. The training discusses why is it important to talk about alcohol, the effects of alcohol on not only our brain and body, but our social life, why people drink in the first place, knowing your pour and understanding binge drinking, alternatives to drinking and safe practices if you do, as well as how to help a friend and local resources.
Work Sheet- Should You Drink to That

Stress & Coping Skills 101: Virtual Training

This virtual training is brought to you by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative and the Plymouth Youth Development Collaborative. The training includes information on stress, coping skills and how to build resiliency.
Work Sheet 1- Stress
Work Sheet 2- Coping Skills
Work Sheet 3- Resilience & Positive Affirmations

Youth Cannabis Use: Virtual Training

This virtual training is brought to you by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative and the Plymouth Youth Development Collaborative. The training includes an overview of cannabis and its impact on the youth brain, as well as some misconceptions around cannabis. It also provides specific regulations around cannabis in Massachusetts and resources on how to help a friend who is struggling with their substance use.

Overdose Prevention Education: Virtual Training

This training is brought to you by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative. It provides an overview of opioid overdose prevention including: what are opioids, what is an overdose, what is the scope of the problem, what puts someone at risk to overdose, what are the signs of an overdose, strategies for managing an overdose event, naloxone and local resources.

How to Help: Virtual Training

This training is brought to you by the Brockton Area Prevention Collaborative and the Plymouth Youth Development Collaborative. The training includes information on how to recognize substance use disorders, how to address substance use disorders, and some resources that might be helpful to someone that is trying to help.
Work Sheet- How To Help