JBER youth club gets active for annual Red Ribbon Week

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kyle Johnson
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Children without a father, a wife without a husband - a family with a hole. These are examples of the effects of substance abuse around the nation - and have been for years.

There are stories, court cases and investigations in every state that can testify to this, but this month there is one particular case that is still affecting the nation today.

In 1985, Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and former Marine was abducted and murdered for his efforts in exposing Mexican drug cartels, said Maxine Martinez, the alcohol and drug control officer at JBER.

Martinez explained the community of Calexico, California reacted by displaying red ribbons as a way of expressing emotional support for Camarena's surviving wife and children.

Eventually, then-President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were named as honorary chairpersons, and officially recognized Red Ribbon Week as a national event in 1988.

Red Ribbon Week is one way communities in America are standing up in an attempt to reduce the demand for illegal drugs.

"The only way we can dry up demand is to change people's behaviors," Martinez said. "The only way to create lasting change in behavior is to educate our children."

Communities nationwide educate youth during Red Ribbon Week about the consequences illegal drugs and illicit use of legal drugs can leave behind.

The Torch club at Two Rivers Youth Center is hosting its own Red Ribbon Week this year.

Kandis Kile, a Child and Youth Programming Associate homework teacher at Two Rivers, said she offered the idea up to the club, and they ran with it.

"It is a very youth-driven event," Kile said.

The Torch club created events for a full week of activities to stand against substance abuse with pledges at the end of the week wherein they make life-long commitments to grow up healthy and drug-free, Kile said.

"Love yourself. Be drug free," is the theme for Red Ribbon Week this year. The theme was created by Alexa Dougherty, a 7th grade student at S.S. Seward Institute in Florida, New York.

"I came up with the theme because drugs are such a harmful thing for your body," Dougherty said. "If you are choosing not to take them, you obviously love yourself because you aren't harming yourself."