High schoolers in the 80s were told to just say no to drugs. Studies show that didn’t work.
Now, Oklahoma’s Attorney General wants to try something different.
On July 8, the Office of Attorney General Drummond invited school districts to participate in the Botvin LifeSkills Training program at no cost through his READY initiative. The program was selected because of its evidence-based approach and prior research on its results.
The numbers Are grim
Children in Oklahoma have higher substance use rates than the national average in many categories, including cigarettes, marijuana, illicit drugs and opioids, according to the 2021-2023 Behavioral Health Barometer. The only category that is below the national average is alcohol use.
Drummond’s initiative uses opioid abatement grants as stipends to aid participating school districts in implementing the program, making it effectively free if a school district has a person who can serve as a facilitator.
Being a facilitator means attending an eight-hour training, then going into classrooms and teaching the LifeSkills curriculum to a variety of age groups. The program, when adhered to, has proven effective at reducing substance use, according to a 2025 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
But educators have a lot on their plate. Counselors, in districts that have them at all, are outnumbered, and President Donald Trump’s early 2025 funding cuts ended programs such as the University of Oklahoma’s PRIME that brought counselors to rural schools, according to reporting by The Oklahoman.
While the READY Initiative offers a curriculum with glowing reviews, it can’t conduct parent outreach or address the need for more direct intervention, which often requires more employees.
Free isn't always easy
Rachel May, a substance abuse counselor at Stillwater Public Schools, described the predicament as a puzzle with four parts: manpower, fidelity to programming, time, and money.
“Teachers being trained in that would be amazing, and it makes a lot of sense to be structured into what they're doing,” May said. “However, they are required to do so much that sometimes I kind of wonder like, is that something else on their plate that's hard to manage?”
A cart full of props
May can be found pushing her cart of props into classrooms all over the Stillwater Public School District throughout the school year. She lugs around a model brain and tubes of chemicals to discuss substance use with students.
She dismantles the brain to show children what parts of theirs are still developing. She displays the chemicals to show what’s really in vapes. It’s not fruit juice; the kinds of chemicals found in insect killers and floor cleaners.
Her teaching method emphasizes increased knowledge, not scare tactics. She’ll spend six hours a day for four days going from class to class, making sure all students in just one grade level receive her lesson on a topic.
Stillwater’s data collection method for students receiving substance abuse counseling wasn’t solidified across the district for the first two years of May’s employment. While the data is a little shaky because of that, she said the school has had a decrease in substance abuse-related offenses by students in the last three years.
May was hired using COVID relief funds. Since then, the district has had to apply for grants to maintain her employment. While there are a lot of options when it comes to addressing substance abuse among children, district decisions can be money-motivated.
Before Drummond’s READY Initiative was introduced, Adair High School had already been implementing the program using opioid abatement grant money.
The school’s facilitator, Keni Burns, said she’s had a very positive experience with Botvin LifeSkills. She recalled hearing students in the hallway discussing why nicotine is bad for them after one of her lessons.
“It got their brains working, so I think that that's a positive because they are having honest conversations about those things and they don't just talk about it to talk about it,” she said.
The READY Initiative uses the same funds that Adair was already using to pay for Botvin. The school is currently in the process of being switched over to the READY Initiative, according to Deputy Press Secretary for the Attorney General’s Office Carrie Burkhart.
Switching to the READY Initiative will free up the money Adair is using for the Botvin program. This will enable them to pay for other opioid-prevention models, such as hiring a part-time counselor, Burkhart said.
What the curriculum can't do
Craig Zettle, senior vice president of the Lifeskills Training program, said the curriculum is a universal model. It’s aimed at informing kids who have no experience with substances and those who have experimented.
Botvin LifeSkills Training would not be harmful to a thrill-seeking adolescent in the ways that other programming might be, but some young people do need extra support in the form of counseling, Zettle said.
The missing piece
University of Central Oklahoma substance abuse studies professor LaDonna McCune said having a licensed substance abuse counselor on hand is vital.
“You might get into that and start working with these young people and not realize the degree of help that they need,” McCune said. “Just educating them is just like the tip of the bucket; they really need someone who can give them good referral information or could set up some counseling for them and their families.”
From 2021 to 2023, 18.4% of children aged 12 to 17 surveyed for the Behavioral Health Barometer in Oklahoma reported having a substance use disorder in the past year.
READY will be offered to middle and high school students. While that is the target age group of the survey, May said that for many students, their first interaction with substances occurs in fourth grade. The most common drug used by children in Oklahoma is marijuana.
A 2024 survey of school resource officers throughout Oklahoma showed 92% of respondents reported an increase in marijuana-related incidents after its medical legalization in 2018, with about one-sixth saying students obtain marijuana with their own medical card and one-third attributing access to parents. May estimated the sources were evenly split.
School resource officers are another intervention point for youth substance abuse. May works closely with Stillwater resource officers to connect children who break the rules with other forms of counseling. Lisa Hale, the local regional director for the National Association of School Resource Officers, said that she emphasizes educating students on the “why” behind the rules.
Incorporating third-party educational services, such as Key Choices, into the school day can also be an effective way to intervene. Founded by Catherine Crawford, the free program emphasizes a child’s autonomy and choice in experimenting with substances and the outcomes of their participation. Teachers contracted with Crawford can be requested by schools. They’ll then teach multiple lessons over the course of a week.
Tackling substance abuse among Oklahoma youth has to be a team effort that includes parents, McCune and Crawford said, especially when it comes to addressing generational substance abuse.
McCune recalled the most effective program she worked in: the first-time offender program at the Mid-Del Youth and Family Center.
She said some parents were angry the first time they had to attend, but by the end of the program, they expressed that they didn’t feel judged. Instead, they felt supported along with their child.
Although that group is outside school, it equally demonstrates the importance of parental involvement, adherence to programming and the necessity of proper staffing that creates positive impacts.
Facilitators who administer the Botvin LifeSkills program are continually reminded of the fidelity required for the program to work, Zettle said. While there may not be someone monitoring every lesson, facilitators are reminded to ensure they cover every point.
“By and large I've found in my experience that, when facilitators implement the program, they're kind of coming at it from a place that they wanna do the best they can for the youth they work with,” Zettle said. “So in that case, fidelity tends to be pretty high.”
Balancing fidelity to the program without encroaching on lesson time in other core subjects might prove difficult in smaller districts where teachers are already spread thin, and counselors are nonexistent.
“Our school has way more supports and options for families than a lot of other little schools, especially in rural Oklahoma,” May said. “Sometimes I think like, man, even with all these supports it’s this hard, I can't imagine what those other little schools are doing.”
The results are dependent on the availability of facilitators and adherence to the program. Oklahoma continues to experience a deficit in trained substance abuse counselors in general, McCune said.
Obtaining the funding to employ substance abuse counselors and school resource officers may be another hurdle districts face in holistically addressing student substance abuse.
“It's so important that other schools know there's grant funding out there,” May said. “Sometimes it's work, but it's worth it.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
