When it was first launched in 2010, National Drug Facts Week was observed by people across the United States, but it was at that time limited to 92 events scattered throughout the country. Now, five years later, the annual event has ballooned in scope and size, to the point where it has spread far and wide and in 2015 it was observed at a total of 1,557 events nationwide, an average of more than 30 per state. The event was held this year from January 26th through February 1st, and as in every year it was sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), along with several other federal agencies:
- the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
- the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at NIH
- the Office of Safe and Healthy Students in the U.S. Department of Education
- the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services
- the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the U.S. Department of Justice, and
- the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
In commenting on the fact that the number of local events being held in observance of National Drug Facts week has increased on such a massive scale, NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow said that the event’s popularity “tells us how much teens — who are bombarded daily with misinformation about drugs — want science-based facts about drug use.” This is indeed one of the hallmarks of National Drug Facts Week, namely that it provides young people with access to addiction scientists and other health experts who can offer candid answers and opinions in response to their questions. This occurs on the national scale in venues such as the annual Drug Facts Chat Day, hosted this year by a team of NIDA scientists and attended by an audience spread across the U.S. It also happens at the hundreds of smaller events held around the country, which take on many sizes and shapes but all share in common the theme of bringing together young people and experts for an honest and open exchange of information about drugs and how they affect the user.
Narconon Supports National Drug Facts Week
There is a fundamental rule about knowledge and information, that when data is missing on a given subject, it creates a sort of vacuum into which will readily flow any and all information to fill the void, whether or not that information is true. National Drug Facts Week exists to address this situation in the field of drug use prevention education. Young people want to make the right choices about their health and happiness, but it can be hard to know what’s true and false in today’s world, when they are being constantly bombarded with conflicting information about drugs from sources including TV, movies, music, video games and of course their friends. To make it as easy as possible for people to host events for National Drug Facts Week, NIDA offers a free toolkit which includes materials such as fact sheets and booklets, as well as advice finding experts to appear as guests and how to promote the event broadly. Events are then typically sponsored by community organizations, schools, hospitals, sports clubs and more. Narconon proudly supports National Drug Facts Week, given that the organization applies similar principles in its own drug use prevention education efforts. When Narconon education specialists travel to local middle and high schools to provide lectures to the students, they use a fact-based approach to education which presents the information in a manner easily assimilated by young people and which allows them to make their own decisions about the subject. It is an approach which has been proven to work, and the fact that NIDA and its partner agencies invest as much as they do in an annual event which promotes this approach on such a massive scale is encouraging to say the least.