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ABOUT THE CURRICULUM

• What are the primary goals of the Project ALERT curriculum?

  The Project ALERT curriculum focuses on preventing teenage non-users from experimenting with drugs, alcohol or tobacco and preventing teenage experimenters from becoming regular users.
  
  It achieves these goals by helping adolescents:
  
  • Understand the consequences of using drugs
  • Develop reasons not to use
  • Establish school-wide norms against use
  • Understand the benefits of being drug-free
  • Recognize that most people don't use
  • Identify pro-drug pressures
  • Counter advertising appeals
  • Resist internal and social pressures to use
  • Communicate with parents
  • Support others in making non-use decisions
  • Recognize alternatives to substance use
  • Learn how to quit
  

• Is Project ALERT an evidence-based program?

  Yes. Project ALERT is listed on the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.  NREPP gives Project ALERT aperfect 4.0 for Quality of Research.
  
  The Project ALERT curriculum was developed and field-tested over a ten-year period by RAND, the nation's leading think tank on drug policy. The program's proven outcomes have been validated through longitudinal tests conducted by RAND. Students receiving Project ALERT:
  
  • Reduced initiation of marijuana use by 30%
  • Decreased current marijuana use by 60%
  • Reduced past month cigarette use by 20% to 25%
  • Decreased regular and heavy smoking by 33% to 55%
  • Developed significantly enhanced anti-drug beliefs