The Smart Talk: Cannabis Prevention & Awareness Curriculum, which is part of the Stanford Cannabis Awareness & Prevention Toolkit, is a 5-lesson theory-based and evidence-based curriculum created by the Stanford REACH Lab as well as by the REACH Lab Youth Action Board, educators, healthcare providers, and scientists across the U.S.

Smart Talk is now available in Spanish! Click here to view! 

Please register to our data dashboard platform below, before beginning the curriculum!

If you have registered before for another curriculum or grade, simply login to obtain your data collection code. 

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Lessons are mapped to National and California Standards, including Health Education Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the Common Core Standards. Please see the links within each lesson to see the Standards associated with that lesson.

Introduction to the Curriculum and General Information

The Smart Talk: Cannabis Prevention & Awareness Curriculum includes 5 lessons, each providing activities, online quiz games, and worksheets in addition to presentations, resources, and other materials aimed at addressing key factors associated with youth cannabis use, including changing adolescents’ attitudes towards and misperceptions about cannabis; increasing their refusal skills to pulls of marketing and social media; reducing stress and depression which have been linked to cannabis initiation and use; improving coping skills; and decreasing intentions and actual use of all cannabis products.

These 5 in-class sessions are reinforced outside of the classroom with follow-up take-home discussion guides that provide open-ended questions and activities for youth to discuss various cannabis-related topics with a trusted adult and/or peer in order to open dialogue between youth and adults. The curriculum is meant to reach all youth, including those at highest risk of cannabis use, racial/ethnic minorities, students in continuation and alternative schools, and those identifying as LGBTQ+.

The Smart Talk curriculum is available in three developmentally appropriate versions: a 2-lesson elementary, a 5-lesson middle, and a 5-lesson high school version. Each version features language and activities specifically tailored to engage and resonate with its intended age group.

The goals of this curriculum are for adolescents to:

Increase students' knowledge about cannabis and the harms it can cause.

Gain awareness of strategies manufacturers and sellers of cannabis products employ to increase use among adolescents, such as deceptive and creative marketing strategies.

Introduce harm reduction and refusal skill strategies among a spectrum of users (from users who use often, to those who experiment, and to those who don’t currently use or have never tried cannabis).

Enhancing coping skills and ultimately preventing and reducing cannabis use.

Before getting started, here are a few notes to review:

 
  • Each lesson has a Lesson Plan Overview that provides background information, learning objectives, key takeaways the students will learn, and health education and common core standards addressed in each lesson. Each lesson also includes direct links to the Canva slides, talking points, a Kahoot quiz, and a Discussion Guide. 
  • Notes (a.k.a. a "script") that can be used for each slide are embedded in each of the slides as well as can be found in the teacher Talking Points Chart.
  • Each lesson has a Kahoot! Quiz linked below and can be used as a pre and post quiz to see how much students know before and after instruction.
  • Discussion Guides for each lesson are available. We suggest providing students with the Discussion Guide that they can take home and discuss with a trusted adult such as a parent/caregiver, coach, mentor, and/or a peer. The Discussion Guides for each lesson are available to either download or print so students can take them home.