STAND welcomes Licensed Professional Counselor, Donna Ford, to the program. Donna is a Scott County native and graduate of Scott High School. She received her Masters degree in Counseling from the University of Memphis and met the requirements of the NCE to become a Licensed Counselor by the state of Tennessee. Donna's expertise is a welcome additon to the STAND program and we look forward to working with her.

Drug use among Scott County students has declined for the sixth straight reporting period. Positive results among Scott County students reached a peak of 9.73% in May 2003. Positive test results have trended downward since that time with even more dramatic decreases evident over the past four months. For the months June-October, positive results have stayed below 1%.

About 20 percent of U.S. teenagers admit they have gotten high by inhaling common household products, and fewer understand the dangers of this practice compared with teenagers five years ago, according to a report released Monday.

The findings reflect a drop-off in educational efforts begun in the 1990s to combat the growth of inhalant abuse, says the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which is publishing the report. Read complete article

People who regularly smoke marijuana may find their memories growing hazy over time, a study published Monday suggests.

In a study of long-term and shorter-term marijuana users, researchers in Greece found that both groups performed more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive abilities than a comparison group who'd only occasionally used the drug. Read complete article

Teen smoking and drinking continued to drop, but teenage abuse of prescription drugs has become "an entrenched behavior" that many parents fail to recognize, a survey released Tuesday showed.

For a third straight year, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America study showed that about 1 in 5 teens have tried prescription drug painkillers such as Vicodin or OxyContin to get high — about 4.5 million teens. It also indicated that many teens feel experimenting with prescription drugs is safer than illegal highs. Read complete article

A Pfizer drug shown to help more than one in five smokers quit the habit received federal approval on Thursday, adding another option to the limited pool of effective stop-smoking prescription medicines.

Varenicline is only the second nicotine-free smoking cessation drug to gain Food and Drug Administration approval. Pfizer Inc. plans to market the twice-daily tablet as Chantix. Read complete article

STAND has announced an Open House to celebrate the opening of their new offices. The event is planned for Tuesday, April 18th from 3:30pm - 5:00pm. Staff members will be on hand to greet guests and refreshments will be served.

The risk that teens will smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs increases sharply if they are highly stressed, frequently bored or have substantial amounts of spending money, according to The National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents, an annual back-to-school survey conducted by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Read complete article

Scott County has had its drug testing program --called "STAND" (Schools Together Allowing No Drugs)-- in its high schools for five years. Now it's expanding.

A survey shows that on average, students in Scott County start experimenting with drugs and alcohol at 12 years old. So this year, the school system has started drug testing in middle school.

The program picks students at random, and the drug test that's administered is simple, painless and private.

"At first I was a little bit nervous about it. It was something new, and I had never really thought about it before, but now it's just not really a big deal," says eighth grader Rachel West. Read complete article

At a time schools across the country are doing everything they can to fight drugs in schools, one local county has found a way. Scott County has taken a STAND against drugs.

Sarah Byrd is a senior at Scott High School. She and most students here have been randomly tested for drugs since they started high school.

"I really like it because they test each and every student that signs the papers, and it lets people know who is on drugs and who is not. It makes me feel better when I know who is safe and who is not," said Sarah Byrd.

The program is called STAND, schools together allowing no drugs. Scott County and Oneida city schools were the first in the state to start a drug testing program.

"We think it's very effective. It has actually become a routine part of our instructional program here," said Scott High School principal Sharon Wilson. Read complete article

Scott County School District of Huntsville, TN added a random student drug-testing program in 2001 to its existing prevention programs. The program is called Schools Together Allowing No Drugs (STAND). Scott County and Oneida City Schools were the first districts in the state of Tennessee to implement drug-testing programs for students.

According to Judge Jamie Cotton, the founder of the program, there has been a “steep decline in the number of recidivism, the repeat offenders, and in the number of positive tests overall." The program has improved students' behavior and decreased the drug problem. So much so, that Judge Cotton says many other counties in East Tennessee and other states are interested in the program. Read complete article

STAND is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping schools to stamp out drugs.