Inside the program helping keep teen drug use at a five-year low

Truth and consequences. Kids got a dose of both in a 40 minute walk through play featuring real students, real EMTs, and a real judge in real life scenes. The students walk through a party. It's the new me. The fun. Yeah, the drunk driving arrest. A courtroom. This is an opportunity for you to learn your lesson and turn your life around. That's all. Courts in recess. An accident should be okay. And an emergency room. We're going to have to shock for the scenes illustrated. What can happen if young people make bad choices. Claire. Claire. Deb. Camilla. Executive director of Drug Free Lea, explains why fifth grade is the best time to learn about this. The age of onset, according to the Monitoring the Future study is ten, which isn't a lot of kids, but even if it's just one kid. So we looked at that data. We looked at the way kids brains work. And it's the kids that are ten, 11, 12. Their brains learn better in a situation where they're actually part of the program. The drug house Odyssey Play has existed in Lee County since 1994, but changes have been made, Carmela says. And one of the things that we knew from the beginning that a scared, straight model was not going to work. It just it works for a week or two and then it stops working. We redid the scenes. We got rid of some of the more scary stuff. Lieutenant Greg Bueno with the Florida Highway Patrol agrees. The purpose is not to scare them. The purpose is this is real life situations. I see the negative side of this often where bad choices lead to tragedies. I've knocked on many doors. I have, been the bearer of bad news in many situations, and I've saw young people make bad choices that affect adversely affect their entire life moving forward. And it's heartbreaking. Perhaps through education, we can prevent some of the tragedies that we've seen in the past. The program received high marks from Spring Creek Elementary teacher and Ben Elkin. She's happy that it opens discussion about alcohol and drugs. I think having the experience with real EMTs, real cops, the fire and emergency, or seeing them in real life makes it real to them versus on a video or a worksheet or something. Called Time of Death 959. I love. I know we're going to get back to the class, and we're going to just not do our plans that we have for the day. They're just going to be asking questions. Fifth grader Gabriel Delgado shares what he learned today. I learned not to adapt to drugs and alcohol. They poison your body and minds, and, they could cause serious accidents. That would not be good to have. For WGCU news, this is Dayna Harpster with Amanda Inscore. Whittamore.