This year’s Red Ribbon Week theme has been announced.

“Be Kind to Your Mind, Live Drug Free” is the prompt for Fountain Hills High School students to use when participating in the Fountain Hills Protect our Youth Coalition video PSA contest.

Video submissions are due by Friday, Sept. 29, and cash prizes will be awarded to the winners. First place wins $500, second place wins $250 and third place earns $100. Honorable mentions will receive $50.

Submissions can be either a Vimeo or YouTube link or a video file (mp4, mov) with a maximum file size of 20 mb. Videos must be at least 30 seconds long and include messages related to staying drug- and alcohol-free.

Data and statistics must be backed up with a source link with the submission, and students can make the video by themselves or with a group or club on campus. All entries have a chance to be shown to Fountain Hills Middle School students.

Several Fountain Hills athletes and coaches already worked with the Coalition to create a “Falcon Way Athlete PSA” video, which can be found at fhcoalition.org. The student athletes discuss what impact substance use would have on them and the people around them, and describe what goes through their minds and why they say no.

“Our expectations for student athletes are that they make good choices at all times,” Athletic Director Evelyn Wynn said in the PSA video. “I’m not naive to the fact that there’s a lot of peer pressure…there is a lot of things happening in high school, and you’re faced with different choices every single day and sometimes it’s hard to make the right one.”

Fountain Hills schools saw a 58.6% decrease in e-cigarette use, 33.7% decrease in alcohol use and 19.2% decrease in marijuana use from 2018 to 2022 based on Arizona Youth Survey results of Fountain Hills students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades.

The Coalition brought back Red Ribbon Week at the middle school last year after a hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Red Ribbon Week is a national awareness campaign to keep kids away from substance use, and it will be held from Oct. 23 to Oct. 31 this year.