Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. As opioids and tobacco continue to claim Hoosier lives, many are looking toward K-12 school-based prevention programs to stem the tide. One of the most well-known prevention programs is Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. At its height, D.A.R.E. was implemented across the world, with more than $750 million spent on the program annually. But study after study has found little evidence for the impacts of D.A.R.E. on drug use. This is a common problem: Keeping kids off drugs and alcohol is not easy. As a result, not every intervention works. The good news is […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. This week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a report on tobacco use among U.S. middle and high school students for the period 2011-2016. The report showed that use of tobacco over that timeframe did not change significantly, with 7.2% of middle school students and 20.2% of high school students indicating current use of a tobacco product. The most popular tobacco product among high school students is e-cigarettes, followed by cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, hookah, pipe tobacco and bidis. Why should Indiana care about these latest findings? As noted in a study released by the Richard […]