Too Good For Drugs

A new form of drug prevention training, intended to encourage students to make positive decisions and not pick up Heroin and other drugs – began its first steps in Nassau County on June 21 and 22.

Representatives from more than 40 of the county’s school districts met at the Police Academy to learn how to teach the Too Good for Drugs program in their schools in an effort to help combat the growing heroin epidemic among our youth.

“Heroin is claiming the lives of many of our residents and destroying families,” County Executive Edward P. Mangano said. The Too Good for Drugs Program is a proactive initiative, focusing on education, decision making and prevention rather than focusing on the specific consequences of drug usage.

Its implementation is part of Mangano’s three pronged approach to combating the growing heroin problem in Nassau County .

The program is being sponsored by the Nassau County Police Department and the County’s Heroin Prevention Task Force. The Task Force formed in 2009 and has representatives from the County Executive ’s office, the District Attorney’s office, the Nassau County Police Department, local and state treatment centers, the Nassau County Department of Mental Health Chemical Dependency and Developmental Disabilities Services and the Nassau County Youth Board.

The June 21 training focused on kindergarten through eighth grade and was led by Detective Pamela Stark of the Nassau County Police Department. These lessons focused primarily on positive decision making skills and made no mention of drugs or other substances until the fourth-grade curriculum.

Stark noted that the initiative is being funded by asset forfeitures – the money earned when the county confiscates illegal substances and reclaims properties. “It’s kind of fitting that drug money is going back in to fund drug prevention programs,” she said.

The training on June 22 focused on grades nine through 12. Drug and substance use and abuse was discussed more in these curricula than in those for younger grades, but the primary focus was still development of positive decision making skills and ways to avoid peer pressure and other dangerous situations with these substances.

The trainings are interactive and allow students to choose the exact focus of the lessons and have their own input, rather than following a more traditional lecture format. Most of the educators present agreed that the lessons would be extremely effective in encouraging students to find alternatives to substance abuse.

“By implementing the Too Good for Drugs Program here in Nassau , we hope to educate and prevent our young people from traveling down this very dangerous and sometimes fatal road,” Mangano said.