Addiction Medicine Made Easy | Fighting back against addiction

A Principal’s Playbook For School Drug Prevention

• Casey Grover, MD, FACEP, FASAM

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The bell rings, the doors open, and the real work begins: keeping kids safe while the drug market slips into their phones and pockets. We sit down with Principal Leland Hansen to unpack the day-to-day reality of school-based prevention, from vape pens hidden in hoodies to Snapchat dealers who change handles as fast as administrators can warn parents. Leland lays out a candid, practical playbook that pairs firm boundaries with a health-first response, including a six-week on-campus program for first offenses that removes friction for families and actually gets used.

We get specific about what’s showing up now—tobacco and THC vapes far more than alcohol—why post-legalization supply is spilling into schools, and how educators investigate under strict limits that require reasonable suspicion. Leland shares the red flags he watches for, like sudden changes in demeanor and unlikely new friend pairings, and explains why middle school is the leverage point where beliefs are forming and choices stick. We compare big assemblies that grab attention with smaller class sessions that build trust and invite tough questions, and we talk about how students quietly use anonymous tip lines to help friends despite a “no snitching” culture.

Parents are crucial, but time-starved. We discuss ways to reach them—tabling at concerts and back-to-school nights, short videos and podcasts they can catch between chores, and direct guidance on home limits that reinforce school expectations. Partnerships matter: local nonprofits providing on-campus support, health educators updating staff on evolving devices, and police following up when adult sellers target kids. The throughline is simple and strong: clear rules, credible facts, and rapid support change outcomes.

If you care about safer schools, smarter prevention, and giving adolescents real choices, you’ll find tactics you can use tomorrow—whether you’re an educator, parent, or community partner. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review to help this podcast continue to grow. Your feedback helps us reach more schools and families.

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Addiction Medicine Made Easy Podcast. Hey there, I'm Dr. Casey Grover, an addiction medicine doctor based on California's Central Coast. For 14 years, I worked in the emergency department, seeing countless patients struggling with addiction. Now I'm on the other side of the fight, helping people rebuild their lives when drugs and alcohol take control. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started. This episode is an interview with a middle school principal, and we talk about what it's like trying to prevent and manage substance use in schools. Here's the backstory on this episode. I go to a lot of schools to talk about drug and alcohol use. I spoke to over 5,000 kids at nearly 30 schools in 2024, and I'm on pace for about the same in 2025. And one middle school has been really receptive to my presentations. And so I asked one of the staff that I work with at that school: being a teacher in 2025 with drugs being sold through social media and all sorts of fentanyl analogs in the drug supply must be really hard. What's it like trying to keep kids safe from drugs and alcohol right now? And fortunately, the school principal offered to record a podcast episode with me on this topic. So thank you to Principal Leland Hansen for taking time to sit down with me and give me the perspective of a teacher and school administrator who is trying to educate students about substance use and maintain a substance-free campus. Here we go. All right. Good afternoon and happy Friday. Why don't we just have you start by telling us who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so thanks for having me. I'm Leland Hansen and I am a principal at Los Arbolites Middle School in Marina of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School Districts.

SPEAKER_01:

How did you get interested in being an educator?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it found me in a way. I actually have two parents that were educators, and I think post-college I was like, I'm gonna find my own way and own path. And then I found a job in education, lo and behold, and I really enjoyed it and I felt felt like I had a knack for it. I felt like I was part of a team and really valued. I enjoyed working with young adults and students. And so I think in a roundabout way, I just found my path. Like once I had my first experience in an educational setting and said yes to all sorts of different opportunities and had a bunch of different roles, which is really great, both classified and certificated. And so had a great deal of experience supporting students in different ways, not just in instruction, but supporting students with behavior. And then fast forward, I find myself a principal of a middle school. Yeah, that's how I got into it.

SPEAKER_01:

What's the usual pathway from teacher to principal like?

SPEAKER_00:

I think everyone's got a unique story. And I know former counselors that became administrators, a lot of teachers, and really it varies. I have administrator colleagues that were PE teachers, science teachers, and math and English teachers. So it just varies a lot. And there's actually new, a new law to allow like OTs to become administrators as well. So there's, I think, an effort to open that leadership pathway up to others, which is really great. And so I think it's great. There's a diversity of perspectives. And when I work with admin colleagues, like we're all kind of admin now, but I have to be like, hey, what did you, what was your forte? Oh, you're a math teacher. Got it. So like our former lives and we have our strengths in that regard too. But yeah, I was an English teacher, reading intervention teacher. I I did a lot of different things, but that was my bread and butter kind of curriculum and areas that I worked in and before administration.

SPEAKER_01:

So now that you're a principal, there's probably great parts to your job, but I'm assuming one of the harder parts of your job is having difficult conversations with students and families when things don't go well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you approach a difficult conversation with a student and parents?

SPEAKER_00:

I think the best way to prepare for that is really investigating and doing your homework and talking to students. And I think that people and families respond a lot of different ways to challenging situations. A really normal reaction is just anger, right? Or frustration. Sometimes I can get directed at the administrator and messenger delivering the news. I didn't do these things, I just found out about these things. And unfortunately, I have to figure out sometimes the consequence or the next step or the support. And so I think with time, I kind of learned to try and remove myself as much as possible from the equation. Like I'm responding to something that is happening on my campus, and I'm here to support the student and set some really clear boundaries. Certain things will not be allowed. And we're going to reteach you and help you, or do restorative practices to help you learn and reflect about this. But sometimes students need to be held accountable first to realize, oh, this is not okay. And so I think when I have a family or a guardian that might be frustrated, I try and just remind them, like, hey, look, I'm here to help them. And there are just certain things that we cannot allow. We want to keep a safe school. So I try and bring it back to the bigger picture. And that tends to be helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Now the reason we know each other is I go to speak to a lot of schools about drugs and alcohol to students, and I've been to your school.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What have you learned over your career is the most effective way to do prevention when it comes to drug and alcohol use as an educator?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I would say I don't know yet. I wish I could give you like an answer with data backing that. I think certain things are hard to measure and intangible. Like it's hard to know how much impact your efforts had. I know that we can look at major incidents and have they decreased over time. But I think clearly abstinence programs did not work. And when we were growing up, that was the big movement of the day. So I think what you're doing is great, like providing information and being really clear and explicit about the dangers of those things. A great example was bait pens contain anti-freeze. I didn't know that. And I'm finding them all the time or a lot of the time. And so I think that's powerful to see those visuals and realize, oh, there's a lot of poison in these things. And I think there has to be a balanced approach of providing the information, but also the accountability piece, right? Making sure we find these things, get them off our campus, connect students with mental health services and drug abuse prevention programs that we have access to. So I think it's always a two-prong approach. You can't have one without the other. And I think that is, I guess, the answer is making sure you have a healthy balance of the two.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, in your role as a school administrator, in some ways you play detective, right? So you're trying to see what the kids are doing when they don't think you're seeing. And that's a role of any teacher. What trends are you seeing and your colleagues seeing in substance use in kids in general right now?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I think the most common thing are tobacco vape pens, THC vape pens. And I don't find a lot of alcohol, luckily. So that has not been a huge, a major incident. But I think vape pens are really easy to hide. They're really easy to pass around. There definitely is an influence of selling and making money off of them and trying to be in this game, this like vape pen selling game, right? Which is illegal and an expulsion if proven to be happening on campus. And yeah, I think that's the most common thing. Some students provide me with evidence because they posted it online and they're taking photos of themselves smoking in the bathroom or even in the classroom at times, and I can see the teacher in the background. So some students are bold enough to do that. That might be a dare. I'm not sure why students make that decision. And yeah, and so investigating is tough. We need reasonable suspicion to search. And then searching can be challenging because you know, we don't have a comprehensive search that, for instance, a probation or a police officer would do. We're hands-off searching and just checking pockets and shoes and other things like that. One, there is reasonable suspicion, but it's a challenging job. It does feel like fishing a lot of the time. I don't, I don't necessarily have a great success rate in searching, but when we have reasonable suspicion, we're going to check and make sure that the students are being safe and don't have something illegal on them on campus.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the influence of social media and all of this is so difficult. One of the schools I worked with, kudos to them, they actually send an email out to the parents of, hey, when kids have gotten in trouble and we've asked them where they've gotten it from, some of them have told us they're getting it from social media. Yeah. And they actually shared the Snapchat handle that they were seeing kids getting substances from, and they gave it to the parents of just, hey, and you and I both know, of course, that person has now changed their Snapchat handle. But it just was really interesting to me. I, before I was doing this work, specifically in addiction medicine, didn't realize just how much of a role social media plays in dealing and distributing substances. And I'm curious, what do you think most parents, where do you think they're at in terms of their literacy with understanding the dangers that social media play in terms of being a source of drugs and alcohol for students?

SPEAKER_00:

I think particularly in the middle school age group and age range, we're on the front line. I think some students experience this even in the upper elementary, but especially here, there's more proximity to the high school. I think a lot of families are coming to the realization that their kid is maybe vaping. And so I think that's a hard conversation, like we spoke about earlier in the previous question, right? I'm delivering this news sometimes, and parents and guardians are not always receptive because they don't want their beautiful little baby to get this news about them vaping, obviously. And it's scary to hear about these things, right? Where I'm sharing or learning that there might be older students at another school that are providing this. It might be, like you're saying, as easy as Instagram usernames that will literally meet the student anywhere, like on a corner or parking lot, and we'll drop it off. And these are young adults and in a lot of cases adults that are advertising and selling through social media. And so I don't know that parents understand how ubiquitous and accessible these things are, but they are.

SPEAKER_01:

When you have that conversation with a student, let's say an eighth grader, you had some suspicion they were vaping, you asked them to come to their office and you look in their backpack and there's a vape cartridge. What is that conversation with the student like? What do you tell them what their options are? Do you tell them what's going to happen next? Do you suspend them? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So we how we deal with that here is we let the student know that they need to go home. They need to have a conversation with their family. We the first time treated as an alternative to suspension. We meet with the family and ask them to speak with the student and take some time at home with the student to have conversations about this. If this is the first incident, there's a lot of conversations and realizations that are happening between the family and the student. When the student returns, we have a six-week substance abuse prevention program that they'll be referred to and that's in-house. So it's not an appointment or something that parents have to drive them to. We find that stuff that's in-house and the most convenient possible for the family is going to be the most effective. Referring out, I think, is great, but it just creates another obstacle for the family at times. But we have great partners from outside of the school as well that come in. In subsequent possessions, we then start going into what's progressive discipline, right? Suspension day, a second one on the second possession, and then so on. But we treat the first one really as a health problem and try and help them the first time with an alternative suspension and then a referral.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So let me push back at your model a little bit. So I'm going to play devil's advocate.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure.

SPEAKER_01:

If you suspend them, doesn't that just allow them to go home and get in trouble?

SPEAKER_00:

I think that's where we really partner and communicate clear recommendations to the family, right? We talk to them about, hey, this is your decision as a family, but I recommend like you remove privileges at home. So I recommend you take their cell phone. I recommend you take away their video game system for a period of time that you determine. And those are parent family decisions, right? But we give recommendations. I think sometimes when they hear it from us, they'll look at their student and be like, you hear that? And then we've given them the green light, go ahead to to do that. Yeah, and I think there's different families handle things in a t ton of different ways. I've had one family say, Can I have this suspension notice? I'm gonna paste it to their mirror in the morning. So uh we do need to partner with families, and I I don't want the kid going home and playing Fortnite on Xbox for 12 hours on a suspension day, but I'm trusting that the family is gonna help with that and identify what's whatever's appropriate to them and their values, what a loss of privilege at home looks like, and hopefully tying that to the school's kind of discipline moves as well.

SPEAKER_01:

When you have that conversation with the family of this is our first offense, what challenges do you feel like the parents bring up the most or do you see as they try to implement some sort of plan at home?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the first thing is just parents not knowing what to do or how to handle this. It might be a new thing for them. Or they might have had a suspicion, but they couldn't find it. I even have families or a parent that will come in and they say, Hey, my student doesn't know I'm here. I want, I want to talk to you about what I'm finding in their room, what can we do? And so there is a delicate balance of families where they want to maintain their relationship with their kid, their student, and but they're also reaching out for help. And so sometimes I'm like, hey, mom or dad, this is anonymous, and I'll check in with the student and ask some questions. So I think parents are struggling, right, to balance their relationship with their kid and then holding them accountable. And I think that's hard for every parent, right? But I definitely just based on my experience, just try and give my two cents to families and recommendations on what I've seen to be effective in the long run.

SPEAKER_01:

I once heard a teacher say that my challenge as a teacher is I'm asked to be a shepherd, but what do I do when the parent is the wolf? If a parent comes into the conversation and they're clearly struggling, what would you do?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I think you get a wide range of families and where they're at and in terms of just their ability to respond and support the school. And some families have students at the high school, middle school, and elementary, and they want to help and they are just maxed out and they have a job or two jobs. And so I think there's just times when within the admin team, like we have a conversation and we'll acknowledge the family is responding, but they don't have the bandwidth to really help right now. And we look at the student and we're like, all right, it's really between us and the student at this point. And and building rapport and relationships with all students is really important. But we have a if we have a student that's chronically in possession or using and repeating over and over, there's the substance abuse issue and normally other mental health issues, trauma that has been experienced. And so then we start to look at the bigger picture and try to figure out if counseling and or therapy is required, if outside services or mentoring programs would be helpful. And like you said, we recognize that some families are maxed out. And so it's as a team, as like the mental health and advent team, we'll recognize hey, the family's there, but they need help and they they don't have the bandwidth. What can we do to look at services across the board? How are we going to balance holding the student accountable and supporting them as we go into the long term, six weeks, 12 weeks, or the whole year? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

How would that go if let's say the parent showed up and either strongly smelled of THC or what seemed intoxicated, where you, as the educator, have a concern about the student's safety?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So as with any educator or administrator, we're also mandated reporters. So if we see something that is we have suspicion of neglect or child abuse or exposure to drugs of some sort, we're required by law to make a report.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, makes perfect sense. Yeah. So you've obviously been an educator for many years. What age group do you think is the best target when it comes to where to focus drug prevention efforts? If you had to pick an age or a grade that you felt like you could make the most progress in, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00:

It's why I love working with middle school students. Like they are at the crossroads, right? And it's what I loved about being a middle school teacher as well. They are no longer in kind of the bubble of elementary or like being a kid, and it's a little bittersweet. It's sad to see that them lose that. But they have such great questions and wonderings. And every year, you know, whatever's the current events or topics, they're like, hey, Mr. Hansen, what is this whole Ebola thing? They want to know about the world at large and like trying to make sense of that. And it's hard for us adults to make sense of it too, but like we do our best. And in the same vein with substances and substance abuse, I think that it's a really great time because they're forming such strong opinions about things, and they definitely are forming opinions that are gonna set them up on a path for the next six or twenty-five years. Yeah. So I think this is the age range. And I think high school still has a really great effect, too, to present that to them. They might have experienced it, and now they're they might be having questions about it. But I think this is the high leverage point, and I'm biased. I'm a principal of a middle school, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny, you've heard me present, and I usually tell a story that why am I at a middle school today? Let me tell you, I was at one high school giving a talk like this, and one of the teachers apologized to me afterwards that the kids were dealing drugs to each other while I was talking. That usually gets the middle school's attention.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

From what I have seen as a non-educator being led into schools to speak, I would agree. Middle school, just based on how and when substance use starts, is really the prime time. Just their brains are growing so fast. And the difference between using in sixth and ninth grade is even just such a big difference in terms of how their brains grow. Yeah. So if I may ask, do you, as a school principal, do you build in substance use prevention education in a very prescriptive way? Okay, it's October, we're gonna do this, it's January, we're gonna do this, or is it more just things coming up like Red Ribbon Week that bring up the conversation? How do you set up a prevention program?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it's been great to have your presentations early in the school year. We got to all seventh graders, three presentations all before the end of October. And now we're starting with our eighth graders. And I believe they had it last year, if I'm not mistaken. So I think having something really early in the year is great. And we also had have advisory classes, which is like what we call our tier one or instruction and reminders for all students. And so I think we really like that time and space. They have advisory every day in the morning. It's kind of like their homeroom, as it used to be called. And we have a number of lessons that we are providing to teachers to give the students like expectations for behavior on campus. But as the school year goes on and on, we can spiral or loop things back in. So if we see like a resurgence or an issue pop back up, including possession of controlled substances on campus, we can loop that back in and respond accordingly. So I think the upfront prevention piece is really great. And looping it back in later on in the spring or whenever it comes up and being a little dynamic in that way can be helpful to respond to the needs of the campus at large.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I've seen schools do it two different ways. One is the we just do it once a year because it's Red Ribbon Week, or it's May and school's about to get out, and we want kids to be smart over the summer. And then I've also had schools reach out to me of, hey, we just had a crisis. Can you come speak to us? In terms of looking at the different ages that I might speak to and that you've worked with in teaching, is there an age that you think is too young to start this conversation?

SPEAKER_00:

I might defer to my colleagues at the elementary level. I would imagine sixth grade would be maybe the earliest, but I imagine there's fifth and sixth graders that could even have experience issues with substance abuse too. I don't know. I don't have enough experience at the elementary level. And we used to be a middle school six, seven, eight, now we're seventh and eighth grade only. So I don't know how pervasive it is at that level at this point in time. I certainly think as well, like with families, there's a balance of letting them be little as long as they can. And but you gotta have a starting point too. But yeah, I think it'd be interesting to ask one of my colleagues from the elementary too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the lowest I've spoken to is fourth grade. And uh I had to really change the language. It's all pictures, it's really simple stuff. And then I'll go all the way up to college and even professional school students. I speak to nursing students as well. And fortunately, I have too many slide decks to count at this point, and I can tailor based on the age. But I was actually intimidated the first time. They said, Can you speak to fourth graders? And I was just, no man, they're too little. And they were just, oh no, they're gonna be great. Yeah. So my experience has been four, five, and six. Those grades usually ask a lot of questions. I can't get through my slides before the hands pop up. Seventh and eighth graders are a little bit more thoughtful, want to listen. And then particularly the eighth graders in the spring are just like, oh man, I'm about to go off to high school. I have got to pay attention. And I've spoken in different forums. With your school, I've spoken to just the seventh graders, I've spoken to just the eighth graders, I've spoken to everybody, I've spoken to small groups. But some schools I go and they give me five, six, seven, eight, and here's 400 kids. Good luck. And that for me is harder because I'm trying to give a simple message to the fifth graders and a complicated message to the eighth graders.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But usually those sort of presentations, we spend a lot of time with questions, and usually we'll take a question, stop, discuss a point, get some follow-up questions, then go on to the next one. But I'm curious what and there may not be a right answer here, but what tends to be thought of as the most effective way in terms of class size and visuals to really uh reach the most students in in getting the message across most effectively?

SPEAKER_00:

For this topic specifically?

SPEAKER_01:

For anything.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think for us it depends on the subject area. PE has larger classes and they can do activities that are hands-on and kinesthetic, and they can have more engagement that way. But 30, 35 to 1. But when you're doing big presentations and they give you 400 kids, right? You gotta make you gotta make that work somehow. Yeah, and then particularly like with if it's a lesson with students that have struggled academically, I think a lower ratio is typically more effective. So I had a reading intervention program with a lot of students that struggled in reading, and it was a 20 to one. So I had less students, but they had a lot more challenges. It looked like more behavior challenges too, because they had a lot of task avoidance and ways of trying to avoid the work. So it depends on your audience, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

My experience has been is that you give me 400 kids and they all get the message, some more profoundly than others. But the classes I think where I've connected the most are more like 15 to 30. And I just sit down on a desk and we have more of a conversation. And sometimes the students will talk to each other and then come back and reflect back to me. A big presentation's much more like me putting on a show. Well, where are my black scrubs? I tell the ER stories, I tell the overdose stories, when we gave Narcan. It's more entertainment or even edutainment, if that's a thing. Um, but I feel like when I get to work with smaller groups, that's really more when we have conversations and the kids will share some of their opinions with me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, yeah, that's that's good. That's really good. And it tracks with what we know. In big groups, the their effective filter is really high, right? I don't want to say something silly. I don't want to ask a question in front of 400 kids, but 30 kids, like I know these kids every day. I work with them every day. If I'm a student in class, and so my effective filter is lower, we can have more intimate conversations, there's more trust in the room. And so, yeah, we definitely see that kind of in other areas of instruction too.

SPEAKER_01:

How much do you see kids trying to intervene with each other? Usually after I give one of my school presentations, some student comes up to me and says, I'm worried about X. Like it might be my dad. I usually bring business cards, it might be my friend. How much do you find that students will notice another student is struggling and try to get help?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So we have an anonymous tip line, an email that comes through. And we've had a lot of students communicate their concerns about a friend that might be struggling with mental health and substance abuse prevention or both. And yeah, I think it's definitely great when we get those anonymous tips. And sometimes it's in person. Kids come to my office and they're like, hey, I want you to know this is happening or this is on campus. So there's some students that step forward and they might be concerned about a student or they might be concerned for their own safety and they speak up, which is great. I think that's something we're constantly battling against. We're as school leaders, we're fighting against this culture of not snitching. No, don't be dismosal, right? And even sometimes with families, they might not feel comfortable reaching out to us. And so we're fighting against this culture of don't share with the teacher or the admin. And things can be happening in secret. And then if it doesn't get addressed, it can get really bad and can escalate. And so I always just remind students there's no, there's only right and wrong. I'd like to throw out the word snitch, I'd like to throw out the word cheese most and because it really hinders our efforts to help keep kids safe and keep our campus safe and keep our campus healthy.

SPEAKER_01:

As an educator in 2025, how high up on your list of urgent issues would you put substance use in terms of what you have to work on?

SPEAKER_00:

It is constantly year after year, one of the top two issues I deal with on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01:

What's the other one?

SPEAKER_00:

Interpersonal conflicts with just drama, whatever. So I think those two really compete for first place, maybe at times. But yeah, when we run reports on major incidents year after year, it's interpersonal conflict or aggression with a peer and substance abuse year after year. So it's always high on the list. And I think especially since vape pens and marijuana legalization in California for adults, it's just the supply out there has become so robust that it's just spilling into the schools. And as a teacher, I I know before legalization happened, it was not something I saw really. It never interrupted class. I don't remember that happening. And then as I got into administration and that legalization happened, that that's when the floodgates opened and the supply became so voluminous that we're dealing with the current situation, right?

SPEAKER_01:

So how do you stay up to date on what trends are in substance use to get ready for the school year every year?

SPEAKER_00:

I think your presentation had great info on the evolution of vape pens. And I've seen that in my my lockbox, my locked file cabinet where I have my contraband. So I think we're seeing real time like what's popular, what's available. We'll see certain brands that keep coming back up because someone is dealing, either adult or possibly a student. And so we'll see a type of vape pen, either tobacco or THC or both, that continuously gets discovered and found and confiscated until hopefully we identify the source. And it can be challenging. One, it's challenging to find the items, and two, it's really difficult to find the evidence of sale, right? And have enough evidence to move forward with an expulsion, which is mandatory by California Ed code. It's a challenging task. But I we see in real time what's being found, right? As a sample of what we can find anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

I always find that every year the kids teach me something when I go to schools. I didn't know what a zen was, the little nicotine packets. And one of the kids at one of the schools went, Hey, what's a Zen? A couple of years ago, Galaxy Gas was the thing everybody was asking me about. So I feel like just being around students, you're probably going to be fairly tip of the spear in terms of being exposed to what's trending.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

How much do you, as an educator, work with law enforcement in terms of trying to protect students from dealers or different suppliers?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So when we get information on, like we said earlier, uh social media account and the reportedly an adult, we definitely call that in and make a report to the police department. Department and we let them follow up. And we've been really fortunate to work with some great police departments and in a previous district probation, or we had safety safety dogs in a previous district as well that would do that kind of work to find things. Scary stories of my students going to a swap meet to meet a guy in a ski mask to get a vape pen or in a city park meeting with an adult that pulls up, does a drug deal, and sells to them? We I I try to paint that picture for our families and adults when I need to have that conversation that this is what we're dealing with, that adults in the community at times are selling to our children. And yeah, just really grateful to our partners in the police departments for helping us work on that and keep our community and school safe.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you what are you worried about coming next in what based on what you've seen in your career that you see as an upcoming trend that makes you worried?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think just the way things have trended in terms of potency of THC or something I we don't even know is coming around the bend, the all the unknowns. And I get it, it's just so hard to keep these things off our campus. We have to operate with reasonable suspicion to search and find these things. And then when we do, it's not always a given we're gonna find it. Even if I'm 99% sure a student has something on them, again, our searches are limited. And we have students that have gotten really sick and have had really negative experiences because they ingested or smoked a substance that just really threw them off, or even got them to the hospital, or makes them display more aggressive behaviors, which will always stand out. And I've had a student that was typically really kind, and then all of a sudden I knew when he was under the influence because he would be aggressive. So those are the things that really create uncertainty and chaotic situations.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree with the potency of 100%. Our generation, alcohol was the big thing, and humans like making everything stronger. So we started with fermenting grapes and grain, and then we end up with Everclear, right? And we're seeing the same thing with cannabis and THC is so different at high potency. I literally went into a dispensary to take photos and was just appalled by the incredibly high numbers of THC in some of these products. And I was just doing a lecture yesterday on the older patient with addiction, the opposite group of what we're talking about. But I feel like my 70-year-old patients and my 12-year-old patients are in the same boat of really not knowing what they're getting themselves into when they look at THC as I want to do that. They think cannabis is cannabis is cannabis, and not realizing they're getting a THC-infused joint. And to your point, that puts both groups in the hospital that the elderly have less reserve to tolerate an intoxicating substance, and so do our youth. Can you give me a sense of what it's like after a drug presentation happens on campus? Whether it's a parent that wants to share something, whether it's a teacher teaching in a health class, whether it's me coming and speaking. Do you notice an appreciable difference in the days following a presentation?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the main thing is just that a conversation's been started, right? And and definitely I have parents that will come to me with different feedback. This is so great, or why did Dr. Grover present this? And so I think it's great. It creates a starting point for a conversation and parents in meetings or in a drop-off or asking questions, which is great. And I think one thing that a lot of families don't realize is all the resources that we either have in-house or access to or can refer out to. And so there's a lot of great work going on with your presentations. Sun Street Centers has partnered with us and done a lot of great work and supported students here. And so there's a lot of help and a lot of efforts going on. And so I know that parents have a lot of fear and anxiety about this, and rightfully so. And there's a lot of really great work going on. And it's hard to advertise it all and say all the great things we're doing, but it's all happening, right? It's all happening on campus and in the community. There's great partnerships that are happening and more collaborations that are to come. And so I'm hopeful in that regard that we're, as a system, getting our act together and being more coherent and cohesive between organizations and really like coordinating our efforts.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The one group we found it's really difficult to reach are parents because they're busy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Particularly a single parent family with multiple kids. That parent is just hustling to keep up with everything that their kids need. So what we're hoping to actually do is do some asynchronous stuff, whether it be TikTok videos, YouTube videos, podcasts, something that they can listen while they're folding laundry or driving kids to school. Yeah. So that's one of our hopes as we go into the second half of the school year is to be able to really give parents some more on-demand material because every time we set up set up a parent event, it's hard for parents to attend. I've gone to a couple and it's one family and me. So I sit down and we just have a conversation. My my hope is that we will be able to do that because as a parent myself, man, that evening time is just hard because you're just running a million miles an hour.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, just trying to finish the dishes and go to sleep. After that, it's the order of the day. But yeah, and I think one of my learnings too was just figuring out as a leader of a school is what are parents showing up for. And and I think PTA meetings can be tough, but all of a sudden we have our winter concert and the gym is stacked. Like they all want to see their kid playing music and singing in the choir. When we have our back to school nights are really well attended too. So we have our community partners table those events too to try and get a little bit of both offerings of the community and community partners as families are coming back for back to school nights or open house in the spring.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great idea. I love the idea of tabling uh events where parents are already going to be attending. Certainly count us in the next time you have uh an event. We'd love to be there and hand out an Arcan and resources and the like.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

One final question, since I know we're both busy people with families.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you look for as an educator that makes you think that's a student that I'm worried about? Is it behaviors? Is it friend groups? Obviously, if the student smells like THC, that's easy. But what are your little tick marks when you're looking around your campus that I want to go check in with that student?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I look forward to change in demeanor. If we have a good baseline of what the student's personality is like typically, and all of a sudden there's a drastic change. I think who the student is associating with might change drastically, or I might see two students that are not friends and they're hanging out together. I'm like, what is this common, what's the common denominator? What's the bond they have here? And my hope is it's not, but sometimes it is that they've both discovered that they like to vape together. So that's some of the telltales is a change in demeanor, and there might be a change in friend group or what might seem like an odd pairing sometimes. There's usually a common link there, which could be a substance.

SPEAKER_01:

That makes sense. Why every time I walk onto campus, you're out there just surveilling the scene, seeing what's going on.

SPEAKER_00:

Try to be out there as much as possible. Yeah, both myself and assistant principal Kim Callum were out for drop-off, dismissal, break, and lunch as much as possible. And we're able to just see what the tone and vibe is on campus and what the energy is, and hopefully respond to things before they even happen.

SPEAKER_01:

I have to say, I have learned a ton. I thought I knew some of what your work was as an educator, but respect to you for what you do and the work that you do to make your campus a safe and welcoming place. Anything you'd like to share as we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Dr. Grover, just thank you so much for just all your work in the community and getting this information out to students and the families. It's great to hear that you guys are thinking about a kind of different model for delivery for families, like the 10-second TikTok factoid or something from Dr. Grover. Sounds great. And we look forward to continuing our partnership with you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you much. Before we wrap up, a huge thank you to the Montage Health Foundation for backing my mission to create fun, engaging education on addiction. And a shout out to the nonprofit Central Coast Overdose Prevention for teaming up with me on this podcast. Our partnership helps me get the word out about how to treat addiction and prevent overdoses. To those healthcare providers out there treating patients with addiction, you're doing life-saving work and thank you for what you do. For everyone else tuning in, thank you for taking the time to learn about addiction. It's a fight we cannot win without awareness and action. There's still so much we can do to improve how addiction is treated. Together, we can make it happen. Thanks for listening. And remember, treating addiction saves lives.