CU-Boulder will lead drug-prevention program

School-violence-prevention experts at the University of Colorado netted a $12.1 million grant to implement a drug-prevention program in middle schools. 
CU's Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence will set up the program and monitor it at participating schools in 10 Southeastern states, expecting it to benefit 200,000 students over a three-year period, Director Delbert Elliott said. 
The Life Skills Training program has a track record of reducing students' use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs by 50 to 70 percent, CU said in a news release. 
The program identifies common misconceptions about substance abuse, and trains students how to deal with peer and media pressure. It also offers lessons on anger management and helps students build better relationships. 
The interactive training is delivered in 45-minute sessions that are held 15 times the first year, 10 times the second year and five the third year. Those subsequent "booster" programs help reinforce the messages, and lead to long-term prevention, Elliott said. 
Funding comes from cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA, through a program aimed at reducing young people's use of tobacco. 
"This is a question that we had to think about," Elliott said. "It's controversial. We had to weigh the fact that we are taking money from a tobacco company with the fact that, at the same time, we can have a major effect on the probability of kids smoking in those nine Southern states." 
Smoking rates among youth in those states -- Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland -- are higher than the national average. 
Nationally, 7 percent of eighth-graders reported smoking one or more cigarettes in the previous month and nearly a quarter of teenagers were smokers by the time they graduated from high school, according to 2007 National Institutes of Health statistics.