Red Ribbon Week Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
58 free Red Ribbon Week trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
55 free Red Ribbon Week trivia questions with answers. Red Ribbon Week runs every October 23-31, and this quiz covers the whole story behind it: DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, the citizens of Calexico who first pinned on red ribbons, the Camarena Clubs, Nancy Reagan and the first national celebration in 1988. Alongside the history you will find factual drug and alcohol questions on nicotine and vaping, opioids and naloxone, caffeine, inhalants, blood alcohol limits, the 988 and poison-control lines, and the organisations behind prevention such as DARE, MADD and SADD. The questions are written for a school audience (roughly grades 5 through 12), so they are educational rather than sensational: no glamorising, no how-to, just the facts a health class or assembly would want students to know. Difficulty ramps from easy warm-ups to a few genuinely tough history questions for teachers and Red Ribbon coordinators. Every answer was checked against a reference page (Wikipedia, redribbon.org and government sources) before it went live, and each question shows its source, so you can use these for classroom quizzes, morning announcements or family trivia with confidence.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By what nickname was Enrique Camarena, the murdered DEA agent honoured by Red Ribbon Week, known?
Kiki
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.
Q 02In which California border town, Camarena's hometown, were red ribbons first worn for him?
Calexico
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.
Q 03Red Ribbon Week falls on the same dates each autumn and always ends on which holiday?
Halloween
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.
Q 04Which court ruled in 1992 that a Mexican doctor abducted for the DEA over Camarena's murder could still stand trial?
US Supreme Court
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.
Q 05Which First Lady was honorary chair of the first national Red Ribbon Week?
Nancy Reagan
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.
Q 06The police-led school programme D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance what?
Education
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.
Q 07According to its organisers, Red Ribbon Week holds what distinction among US drug-prevention campaigns?
The largest and longest-running
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.
Q 08The DEA's National Take Back Day, held at thousands of sites each spring and autumn, collects what from the public?
Unused prescription drugs
Unused prescription drugs: leftover pills too often end up in the wrong hands, so the sites take them back anonymously and have them destroyed.
Q 09Camarena had spent more than four years working for the DEA in which Mexican city when he was kidnapped in 1985?
Guadalajara
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.
Q 10Before joining the DEA, Camarena served in which branch of the US military?
Marine Corps
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.
Q 11What was the DEA's largest-ever homicide investigation, into agent Camarena's murder, code-named?
Operation Leyenda
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.
Q 12Which actor plays Camarena in Narcos: Mexico?
Michael Peña
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.
Q 13Which president declared drug abuse 'public enemy number one' and later created the DEA?
Nixon
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.
Q 21Besides buying alcohol, what does the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act require states to ban for the underage?
Possessing it in public
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.
Q 22How did the National Minimum Drinking Age Act pressure states to comply?
Cutting federal highway funds
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.
Q 23In most US states, what blood alcohol concentration is the legal limit for drivers aged 21 and over?
Q 14The DEA is a federal law enforcement agency that sits under which arm of the US government?
Department of Justice
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.
Q 15By her own account, the First Lady coined Just Say No in reply to whom?
A schoolgirl
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.
Q 16On which sitcom did a First Lady play herself to promote Just Say No?
Diff'rent Strokes
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.
Q 17The DARE programme began in 1983 on the initiative of which city's police chief?
Los Angeles
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.
Q 18What animal is DARE's mascot, Daren?
A lion
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.
Q 19Which group did Candace Lightner found in 1980 after a drunk driver killed her daughter?
MADD
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.
Q 20SADD, founded in 1981 as Students Against Driving Drunk, now stands for Students Against what?
Destructive Decisions
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.
0.08%
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.
Q 24Which state became the first in the US to cut its drink-driving limit to 0.05%, in 2018?
Utah
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.
Q 25Alcohol is classified as what kind of drug?
A depressant
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.
Q 26Which organ breaks down most of the alcohol a person drinks?
The liver
The liver clears only about one standard drink an hour, so cold showers, coffee and fresh air do nothing to sober anyone up faster.
Q 27Heavy drinking in the teenage years is linked to a smaller version of which memory-related brain region?
Hippocampus
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.
Q 28The brain region that weighs long-term consequences is not fully mature until what age?
The mid-twenties
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.
Q 29Which reward-pathway brain chemical gives drugs and their cues such a strong pull on behaviour?
Dopamine
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.
Q 30Which habit does the World Health Organization blame for more than 7 million deaths a year?
Tobacco use
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.