58 Fun Facts About Red Ribbon Week

By what nickname was Enrique Camarena, the murdered DEA agent honoured by Red Ribbon Week, known?

Kiki Camarena spent more than four years on the trail of Mexico's biggest traffickers; after his murder in 1985, people in his California hometown began wearing red ribbons in his memory.

In which California border town, Camarena's hometown, were red ribbons first worn for him?

Calexico is where Camarena went to high school; after his murder, club members there wore red ribbons and pledged to lead drug-free lives, and parent groups carried the symbol nationwide.

Red Ribbon Week falls on the same dates each autumn and always ends on which holiday?

Halloween: Red Ribbon Week runs October 23–31 every year, when millions of people wear or display a red ribbon to show their commitment to a drug-free life.

Which court ruled in 1992 that a Mexican doctor abducted for the DEA over Camarena's murder could still stand trial?

US Supreme Court: it ruled 6–3 that the abduction did not breach the extradition treaty with Mexico, yet the trial judge then acquitted the doctor because the evidence against him was too thin.

Which First Lady was honorary chair of the first national Red Ribbon Week?

Nancy Reagan had already received a proclamation from the clubs in Camarena's hometown, which brought the ribbon national attention; in 1988 she and the President became the campaign's honorary chairs.

The police-led school programme D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance what?

Education: Drug Abuse Resistance Education became America's most popular school drug programme, yet study after study found that it did not stop pupils from trying drugs.

According to its organisers, Red Ribbon Week holds what distinction among US drug-prevention campaigns?

The largest and longest-running: what began in 1985 as red ribbons worn in one grieving California town now reaches millions of people every October.

The DEA's National Take Back Day, held at thousands of sites each spring and autumn, collects what from the public?

Unused prescription drugs: leftover pills too often end up in the wrong hands, so the sites take them back anonymously and have them destroyed.

Camarena had spent more than four years working for the DEA in which Mexican city when he was kidnapped in 1985?

Guadalajara: Camarena was seized there in broad daylight on 7 February 1985, on his way to lunch with his wife, and his body was found a month later.

Before joining the DEA, Camarena served in which branch of the US military?

Marine Corps: Camarena enlisted in 1968, three years after his eldest brother died while serving in Vietnam, then went home to work as a police officer before joining the DEA.

What was the DEA's largest-ever homicide investigation, into agent Camarena's murder, code-named?

Operation Leyenda, Spanish for 'legend', sent a special DEA unit into Mexico, where the trail led to senior police officials, and it ended in a string of trials in the United States.

Which actor plays Camarena in Narcos: Mexico?

Michael Peña plays Camarena in the first season, opposite Diego Luna as cartel boss Félix Gallardo; the season builds to the agent's abduction, torture and murder.

Which president declared drug abuse 'public enemy number one' and later created the DEA?

Richard Nixon made the declaration in June 1971, launching the 'war on drugs'; two years later he merged several federal drug offices into a single agency, the DEA.

The DEA is a federal law enforcement agency that sits under which arm of the US government?

Department of Justice: the DEA was created inside it in 1973 by merging several drug offices, so that a single agency would coordinate federal drug enforcement.

By her own account, the First Lady coined Just Say No in reply to whom?

A schoolgirl in Oakland asked what to do if someone offered her drugs, the First Lady recalled, and her three-word answer became the name of thousands of anti-drug clubs.

On which sitcom did a First Lady play herself to promote Just Say No?

Diff'rent Strokes: Arnold's newspaper story about drug pushers catches the First Lady's eye, and she turns up at his home to thank him.

The DARE programme began in 1983 on the initiative of which city's police chief?

Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates launched DARE with the city's schools in 1983, sending officers into classrooms partly to improve relations between the police and the community.

What animal is DARE's mascot, Daren?

A lion: Daren the Lion fronts a programme that swapped its drug lectures for the keepin' it REAL lessons, which focus on pupils' decisions and have them practise saying no.

Which group did Candace Lightner found in 1980 after a drunk driver killed her daughter?

MADD: Candace Lightner founded it in California after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a hit-and-run driver who had recently been arrested for another drunk-driving offence.

SADD, founded in 1981 as Students Against Driving Drunk, now stands for Students Against what?

Destructive Decisions: the group began at a Massachusetts high school after two athletes its founder coached died in drunk-driving crashes, and took the broader name in 1997 to cover drugs and violence too.

Besides buying alcohol, what does the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act require states to ban for the underage?

Possessing it in public: despite its name, the Act never outlawed drinking itself, so its rules leave room for a drink at home with a parent or for religious purposes.

How did the National Minimum Drinking Age Act pressure states to comply?

Cutting federal highway funds: states that kept a lower drinking age stood to lose part of their road money, and the pressure survived a constitutional challenge, South Dakota v. Dole, in 1987.

In most US states, what blood alcohol concentration is the legal limit for drivers aged 21 and over?

0.08% replaced a looser 0.10% standard one state at a time, in a hard-fought campaign that took about two decades to win all 50 states, the last of them in 2004.

Which state became the first in the US to cut its drink-driving limit to 0.05%, in 2018?

Utah made the change on 30 December 2018, the day before New Year's Eve, acting on the advice of federal crash investigators who had been urging every state to do the same since 2013.

Alcohol is classified as what kind of drug?

A depressant: alcohol slows the messages travelling between brain and body by damping the activity of neurons, which is why reaction time and judgment fade as the drinks add up.

Which organ breaks down most of the alcohol a person drinks?

The liver clears only about one standard drink an hour, so cold showers, coffee and fresh air do nothing to sober anyone up faster.

Heavy drinking in the teenage years is linked to a smaller version of which memory-related brain region?

Hippocampus: it handles learning and memory and is still developing in the teenage years, so heavy drinking then can leave long-lasting changes in the brain's structure.

The brain region that weighs long-term consequences is not fully mature until what age?

The mid-twenties: the prefrontal cortex, which handles planning and self-control, is one of the last brain areas to mature, and that lag leaves teenagers more vulnerable to risky choices and addiction.

Which reward-pathway brain chemical gives drugs and their cues such a strong pull on behaviour?

Dopamine teaches the brain to repeat whatever set it off; scientists now think it drives the urge to take a drug again more than the pleasure itself.

Which habit does the World Health Organization blame for more than 7 million deaths a year?

Tobacco use kills more than 7 million people a year by the WHO's count, and about 1.6 million of them never used it: they breathed in other people's smoke.

Nicotine is an alkaloid found mainly in plants of which family?

Nightshade (Solanaceae): tobacco's cousins the tomato, potato and aubergine carry traces of nicotine too; the plants make it as a poison against insects, which is why it was long used as an insecticide.

The addictive chemical in cigarettes takes its name from which French ambassador, who introduced the plant to the royal court?

Jean Nicot, France's ambassador to Portugal, sent tobacco home with a letter praising it as a medicine; botanists named the plant Nicotiana after him, and the chemical's name followed.

Which symptoms characterise nicotine withdrawal, part of why the drug is described as highly addictive?

Irritability, anxiety and poor concentration set in within the first weeks of quitting; nicotine gum and patches ease them and raise the chances of stopping by 50 to 60%.

The 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking was released on which day, chosen to soften the stock-market reaction?

Saturday: the Surgeon General picked it so that the markets were shut and the Sunday papers would lead with the news; he recalled that the report 'hit the country like a bombshell'.

What did Congress order onto every cigarette pack a year after the 1964 smoking report?

Health warning: Congress made one compulsory on every American cigarette pack in 1965, and within a few years it had also taken cigarette advertising off television and radio.

What is smoke that drifts straight off a burning cigarette, rather than being exhaled, called?

Sidestream smoke rises from the lit end and carries higher concentrations of nicotine and cancer-causing chemicals than the smoke a smoker breathes out; it makes up most of second-hand smoke.

Which charity runs the Great American Smokeout, a November day when smokers are urged to quit?

American Cancer Society: the idea grew from a 1970 event in Randolph, Massachusetts, where Arthur Mullaney asked people to skip cigarettes for a day and give the savings to a school scholarship fund.

The modern e-cigarette was patented in 2003 by a pharmacist, himself a heavy smoker, from which country?

China: Hon Lik, a pharmacist from Shenyang, wanted to kick the habit that had killed his father; he never managed it, and ended up both smoking and vaping.

In 2024, which product had been US youth's top tobacco product for 11 straight years?

E-cigarettes stayed on top in 2024 even though the number of young users had fallen to about a third of its 2019 peak of more than five million.

In December 2019 the US raised the federal minimum age to buy tobacco and vaping products to what?

21 became the national minimum on 20 December 2019, and the law took effect the moment it was signed, so shops had to start turning away 18-to-20-year-olds at once.

What is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug?

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine, the brain chemical that brings on sleepiness, which is why a cup of coffee keeps drowsiness at bay.

Morphine and codeine are natural painkillers found in which plant?

The opium poppy yielded morphine in 1804, thought to be the first medicinal alkaloid ever isolated from a plant; its discoverer named it after Morpheus, the god of dreams, because it brought sleep.

Fentanyl is roughly how many times more potent than morphine?

50 to 100 times morphine's strength means that even a tiny amount can cause a fatal overdose, which is why counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl are so dangerous.

Which Belgian scientist first synthesised fentanyl at the pharmaceutical company he had founded?

Paul Janssen's fentanyl was quickly taken up as a surgical anaesthetic, and it has become the opioid most often used for pain relief during operations.

Naloxone, the medication that reverses an opioid overdose, is best known under which brand name?

Narcan became the first naloxone product approved for sale without a prescription in March 2023, and it has no effect on someone with no opioids in their system.

Naloxone blocks the effects of opioids for roughly how long?

30 to 90 minutes is shorter than many opioids stay in the body, so the effects of an overdose can return once the naloxone wears off.

Which of these street drugs do US doctors still legally use as a local anaesthetic?

Cocaine numbs tissue and narrows blood vessels, so it survives as a rarely used anaesthetic for nose and throat procedures; that accepted medical use keeps it out of the law's strictest category.

Which Controlled Substances Act category holds drugs with high abuse potential and no accepted medical use?

Schedule I drugs cannot be prescribed by any doctor, and the DEA sets strict quotas on how much of each may even be produced.

Which category of substance is used more by younger teenagers than by older ones?

Inhalants are everyday products such as glues, lighter fluid and spray paints, within easy reach of young teens; even a single use can be fatal, an effect known as sudden sniffing death.

Prescription stimulants, one of the three most-misused classes of medicine, are most often prescribed to treat what?

ADHD: stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed for it, yet the law ranks them alongside fentanyl and methamphetamine because of their high potential for abuse.

Since July 2022, which three-digit number reaches the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline around the clock?

988 replaced the ten-digit 1-800-273-8255 in July 2022 because a three-digit code is far easier to remember in a crisis, and it takes texts as well as calls.

The free US hotline 1-800-222-1222 connects callers to what?

Poison control: the single national number routes each caller to the poison centre covering their area, where pharmacists, nurses and doctors answer day and night.

A New York artists' caucus adopted the red ribbon in 1991 as the symbol of which cause?

HIV/AIDS: the artists never copyrighted the ribbon, so that anyone could make and wear one, and Jeremy Irons was among the first to wear it on television, at the 1991 Tony Awards.

Penne Laingen, wife of a US hostage in Iran, popularised ribbons of which colour by tying one round a tree in 1979?

Yellow: Laingen tied her ribbon round the oak in her front yard while her husband was held in Tehran, and it became a national symbol; she later gave it to the Library of Congress.

In which border city was Enrique Camarena born in 1947, before his family moved to California?

Mexicali: Camarena's family crossed into California when he was a child; he went back to Mexico as a US drug agent and was murdered there in 1985.

Rancho Búfalo, the vast Chihuahua plantation raided in 1984 on DEA information, grew which crop?

Marijuana: Mexican soldiers backed by helicopters destroyed the plantation, and the traffickers, who suspected Camarena had tipped off the authorities, had him kidnapped three months later.

An alcohol 'blackout' happens when drinking stops the brain from doing what?

Storing new memories: alcohol temporarily blocks the brain from moving events into long-term storage, so the drinker wakes with gaps where the evening should be.

Which drug lord, jailed for Camarena's murder, walked free in 2013 and was recaptured in 2022?

Rafael Caro Quintero had served 28 years of a 40-year sentence when a court freed him on a technicality; after nine years on the run he was caught in Sinaloa and later sent to the United States for trial.