The revelation of prosecutorial misconduct comes four years in to Deborah Nicholls’ latest push — backed by the — to overturn her 2008 convictions for the first-degree murders of her three children, who died when the family’s house caught fire in the middle of the night on March 7, 2003.

During Nicholls’ jury trial, prosecutors relied heavily on findings from one Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who found that chemical testing results were consistent with an accelerant being used in the deadly fire. But the district attorneys kept secret a second opinion from another CBI scientist who found that the testing did not show the presence of an accelerant. That second scientist also agreed with a defense expert that some testing had been contaminated, according to an April 28 order from El Paso County District Court Senior Judge Michael Mullins.

“The suppressed exculpatory evidence in this case undermines the core foundation of the prosecution’s case — whether by neutralizing key witnesses or by demonstrating a lack of reliable laboratory confirmation — and thus meets the materiality standard,” Mullins wrote. “Accordingly, there exists a reasonable probability that the outcome (of the trial) would have been different had the evidence been disclosed.”

Prosecutors in argued that the second CBI scientist’s opinion — provided to the prosecution in the form of notes as they prepared for trial — was work product that did not have to be turned over the the defense under Colorado discovery rules, which govern evidence sharing in criminal cases. Mullins rejected that argument on the grounds that exculpatory information must always be shared.

“Clearly, based on the evidence at trial, the suppressed evidence is exculpatory, and it undermines the prosecution’s material witness and supports the defendant¶¶Òőap expert analysis,” Mullins wrote.

The judge did not take action on Nicholls’ convictions in the April order but set the case for a hearing on May 27. At that hearing, Mullins could overturn Nicholls’ convictions and order she receive a new trial, or he could continue the case in order to hear the rest of her post-conviction relief claims, which her defense team presented to the court separately from the prosecutorial misconduct claims. A spokeswoman for Allen, Kate Singh, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.

Nicholls has long-maintained her innocence in the fire that killed her children, Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3. Prosecutors argued during the parents’ separate jury trials that Deborah and Tim Nicholls killed their children in an attempt to collect insurance money to fund their methamphetamine addiction. The parents were accused of spreading a highly flammable cleaning fluid around the house — and on their children’s pajamas — and then intentionally setting the home on fire.

Tim Nicholls allegedly confessed the murder plot to another prisoner while awaiting trial, and that man then became an informant and a key witness for the prosecution. Deborah Nicholls was not home when the fire started; her husband escaped the blaze with burns and injuries after jumping out a second-story window.

Prosecutors alleged Deborah Nicholls masterminded the plot while her husband carried it out and set the fire; she has suggested she may have left candles burning unattended in the home. Deborah’s murder convictions wereÌęupheld by the Colorado Supreme CourtÌęin 2017.

The newly discovered second CBI scientist’s notes were tucked in a “stack of papers in a cardboard box in a shelf at CBI’s warehouse,” said Janene McCabe, an attorney for Deborah Nicholls. A CBI analyst tasked with reviewing the case amid Nicholls’ 2022 innocence claim pulled the whole file for the review and then disclosed the entire file to the defense for the first time in 2024, McCabe said.

“It is really questionable as to whether she would have been found guilty and whether they would have proceeded to trial with this evidence,” McCabe said. “The prosecutor knew that this science they were relying on was contradicted by another expert at the lab.”

McCabe said Deborah Nicholls is both relieved and frustrated by the finding of prosecutorial misconduct.

“The wheels of justice turn very slowly,” McCabe said. “On the one hand she is very relieved that finally somebody looked at her case in a different perspective … on the other hand she is still sitting in (prison). And it has been 18 years.”

Rightfully so, since the mural was inspired by a similar drawing she had done for a sticker contest hosted by , a youth-focused drug prevention organization. It was one of the winning designs and earned her the opportunity to adapt the sticker into a piece of public art.

“I think it inspires kids to give out their creativity and use their voices to say what they’re proud of,” Sprouse said at the mural reveal. “Balloons rise up, and if you see someone out there doing drugs, help them, be a support system for them, show them that they’re able to rise up.”

Rise Above’s art projects aim to engage youth in community initiatives that foster personal relationships and give them a sense of belonging, two factors that studies show are linked to lower rates of substance use. The nonprofit promotes to debunk the myth that teen drug use is pervasive and help young people cultivate healthy behaviors,Ìęsaid executive director Kent MacLennan.

In 2024, Rise Above Colorado kids ages 12 to 17 and found that youth who choose to abstain are the majority, not the minority.Ìę“Our focus has really been (to) change the narrative, show the data from these surveys that are legitimate that show most youth aren’t using,” MacLennan said.

Nonprofits like Rise Above Colorado and Western Colorado Area Health Education Center offer activities and events that aim to engage teens outside of classrooms and help them develop a sense of purpose. From documentary screenings and naloxone trainings to youth-built drug information resources and even mural projects, organizations seek to equip young people with science-based facts and enable them to become experts among their peer groups. Recent state-level public health campaigns, too, have focused on the facts instead of fear, in hopes of illuminating new research on substances like marijuana.

This is the final story in The Denver Post¶¶Òőap three-part series examining how drug education has evolved alongside the legalization and normalization of substances like cannabis and psychedelics. Previous stories focused on how the general public has begun warming to harm reduction ideals in light of the opioid crisis and how local schools are navigating drug education in the era of drug reform.

“We have always wanted to focus on some of the root causes and what are the things that youth are doing that make life worthwhile,” MacLennan said. “So, celebrating all of that, yet at the same time making sure that youth understand the risks, the consequences. That they understand adolescent brain development and the importance of all the years that you cannot use are formative for the brain and dramatically reduce your risk of addiction later on in life.”

Today, these organizations are also filling in for state agencies that often lack the resources to lead educational campaigns.

After becoming the first state to permit recreational marijuana sales in 2014, Colorado funded several campaigns to inform both residents and tourists about its new laws as well as the health effects of cannabis use.

However, neither the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment nor the Department of Revenue currently has funding to do the same for psychedelics, which were legalized and decriminalized in 2022.

Representatives from both publicly funded agencies declined to be interviewed for this story.

One exception is the Colorado Department of Transportation, which recently to educate folks about the effects and legality of driving under the influence of psilocybin, including those who microdose.

New campaign relies on cannabis research

Some of Colorado’s early government-led cannabis campaigns targeted teens with varying levels of success.

In one notorious flop, the Colorado Department of Law and the Governor’s Office spent $2 million on an initiative called “Don’t Be A Lab Rat.” Launched in 2014, the campaign suggested that Colorado was a testing ground for the consequences of marijuana legalization — and that teens would be the test subjects if they chose to consume. (It’s worth noting that the messaging targeted adolescents under the legal age to purchase and consume cannabis, which is 21 years old.) In addition to TV and movie theater ads, campaign organizers installed human-sized rat cages around Denver, which were promptly mocked and vandalized.

The state health department — which was not involved in “Don’t Be a Lab Rat” — later developed several youth-targeted campaigns, such as Protect What¶¶Òőap Next in 2015, which encouraged kids to set goals for their lives and then cautioned that marijuana use could get in the way of those; and Forward Together in 2020, aimed at inspiring teens to build more connected relationships. (While not specifically for teenagers, a 2015 campaign called Good To Know showed some effectiveness in educating pregnant women, parents and tourists about Colorado’s marijuana laws.)

The only state-led initiative that still exists today, however, is called . Rolled out in 2018, it is essentially a website that features guidance on how to consume and store cannabis responsibly, as well as information related to adolescent use and use during pregnancy.

In recent years, the state legislature has invested funds to support researching and educating the public about highly potent marijuana.

Lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 requiring the Colorado School of Public Health to perform a systematic review of the scientific research related to possible physical and mental health effects of high-potency cannabis concentrates, such as vape oils and dabs, and create a public health campaign based on the findings. The state allocated $5 million to the school — a partnership between the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado — to support this initiative over several years.

The result, called launched in 2024 with the goal of raising awareness about the risks of consuming high-concentration cannabis through podcasts, documentary shorts and social media content, including influencer partnerships. The campaign specifically highlights the potential health risks associated with consumption during adolescence and pregnancy, which researchers identified as the most critical periods for harm in their review of more than 650 scientific studies. (Researchers broadened their definition of “higher concentration cannabis” beyond concentrates to include flower with more than 10% THC and edibles with more than 5 milligrams of THC.)

While previous campaigns focused on helping people understand laws after legalization and risks of impaired driving, Tea on THC is the first to synthesize existing research about the potential health impacts, Greg Tung, associate professor of health policy at the Colorado School of Public Health, said by email.

“The campaign focuses on what¶¶Òőap changed versus repeating outdated messaging,” Tung said. “Our work draws attention to the fact that cannabis products of today are very different than those in years past, and we convey the distinction between these products and what they mean for people’s health.”

For example, messaging emphasizes that cannabis flower contains much more THC now than in decades past — often between 17% to 28% compared to around 3% in 1983, — while concentrates contain as much as 95% THC. The combination of higher-concentration marijuana and a high-concentration delivery method means users can access unprecedented levels of THC at unparalleled speed, the website states.

Still, the campaign’s objective is to discourage people from starting to use cannabis unless they have a valid medical reason, so the messaging leans heavily into potential risks, even though researchers found some evidence that concentrates can benefit individuals with preexisting mental health conditions. Acknowledging the risks is important since legalization has propelled the perception that marijuana is effectively harmless, which is not the case, Tung said.

talks about short-term effects like problems with memory and concentration, a risk of psychosis and acute vomiting, as well as the potential for long-term issues like cannabis use disorder, breathing problems and increased risk of mental health conditions like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.

The Tea on THC has likely been the most visible state-funded campaign with more than 56 million viewer impressions between social media, paid media, billboards, and other forms of advertising. The website now exceeds 40,000 monthly visits, the school said, and has reached 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties.

Power to the young people

Instead of relying on top-down drug prevention initiatives, some nonprofits and local health agencies are entrusting young people to lead the way.

The city of Broomfield’s , for example, takes part in an advisory coalition that helps shape health initiatives, such as drug prevention and mental health programming. The city pays middle and high schoolers for their time and expertise, and puts them at the helm of a podcast called which touches on a range of topics, including drugs.

Rise Above Colorado recruits students from across the state to be part of its Teen Action Council, which does peer drug education in a variety of ways. The council receives training on positive social norms so members can act as ambassadors within their communities and also leads digital projects that seek to disseminate critical drug information to others their age.

In 2023, for example, the council collaborated with Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office to develop a website called intended to spread awareness about opioids and reduce the risk of misuse. It details facts that teens can share with their friends, like the majority of fake pills out there are laced with fentanyl and that ingesting just 2 milligrams can be fatal. It also offers guidance on how to use naloxone and where to find resources such as free counseling. Connect Effect was produced using $750,000 from the state’s opioid settlement funds.

Additionally, in 2017, the Teen Action Council created that provides robust information about various substances, including psilocybin, fentanyl, meth, marijuana and more. Pages include a brief history of the drug, its common names, descriptions of the high, its long and short-term effects on the brain and body, and the legal consequences of possession. Each one includes links to the information sources, so that teens who find the page can use it as a resource if they are interested in learning more.

MacLennan isn’t concerned that the website contains information that could be considered positive or focused on harm reduction.

“Hopefully, youth can understand: what is the high like, why does that potentially make it addictive, and then what are the repercussions? So that ultimately they make informed decisions,” MacLennan said. “We would rather that than, ‘Oh well, I just have to say no’ — it¶¶Òőap not that black and white. We need to trust them that we’re developing skills enough so they can make good choices.”

Beyond the content, the most important part about the website is that it’s written for youth, by youth. Olli Hocker, who served on Rise Above’s 2024-25 Teen Action Council, considers it the organization’s most impactful initiative because of the service it provides.

“I know that I was looking things like that up when I was actively using,” Hocker said in a 2025 interview, proudly three years sober from using nitrous oxide. “I think it¶¶Òőap really important to have accurate and nonjudgmental information and it¶¶Òőap something that is hard to find other places.”

Lyndall Young, nurse and instructor at , echoed that peer-led initiatives are often the most successful she sees in the field.

Her organization acts as a resource hub, working to bring drug prevention and intervention to 15 communities across the Western Slope through a variety of initiatives both inside and outside of schools. Programming ranges from stocking naloxone vending kiosks and training educators to use the opioid reversal medication to facilitating classroom lectures about opioids and curating youth events, like documentary screenings and expert panels about substance use and addiction.

In Delta County, Young works with high schoolers to develop drug lessons that they then present to younger grades. The impact goes both ways, she said. Youth leaders become advocates and their message resonates profoundly with peer audiences.

“We’ve really found (younger kids) love the science behind it and they love it when it comes from a peer. So we really feel that has made a huge impact in our outreach to have those student stars,” Young said.

What exactly constitutes drug education has expanded over the last several years, Young said. While many think of classroom lectures, the work has broadened to become multifaceted and include wraparound services, such as housing, food and counseling support, that seek to address issues that often predate substance use and abuse. Young is heartened by this shift, as it personalizes services and education.

“One thing is not going to work for all the students. You have to hit it (from) different directions,” she said.

Risks of psychedelic use aren’t widely known; Colorado campaign hopes to change that

Education needed for young adults, too

Having access to science-based drug education isn’t just important for teenagers. Young adults also need to understand the perceived benefits and risks of any given substance so they can make informed choices once they turn 21, said public health expert Kristin Nash.

Nash is co-founder of the nonprofit , which is dedicated to addressing the need for accurate, nuanced and science-based information in the burgeoning psychedelics space. Last year, the organization used Colorado to test a new digital campaign called , aimed at educating Gen Z about psychoactive substances and concepts like “set and setting” that can impact a trip.

As psilocybin mushrooms have become more normalized, use has risen. In 2023, about 1.7 million Americans ages 18 to 29 reported using the drug in the past year, marking a 44% increase from 2019, according to .

Before You Trip’s goal was to encourage young adults to “pause, learn and reflect” with a mix of social media ads, Instagram influencer content and a website with drug information and harm-reduction resources. While the campaign highlighted psychedelics’ potential risks and documented harms, its tone was intentionally nonjudgmental and content did not advocate for abstinence.

“We know that young people are already making the decision to use and engage with these substances. We also know that ‘Just Say No’ approaches turn young people off to the message, and to be fair, we also know a lot of people do get benefit from these,” Nash said. “We need to arm them with the best information we have around risk, contradictions and harm reduction strategies.”

Before You Trip’s pilot campaign ran for roughly six weeks and reached 860,518 unique individuals aged 18 to 30 in the Denver, Boulder and Aspen metro areas, Nash said. Instagram content clocked 5.1 million impressions among that demographic and the Before You Trip website received about 66,000 visits. Those who saw the campaign said it was informative, engaging and helpful.

For Nash, the feedback was reassuring. For years, she has advocated that state governments adopt comprehensive education plans as they seek to legalize and decriminalize psychedelics. But so far, that hasn’t happened. To fill the gaps, the coalition plans to expand Before You Trip into a sustained public health education program and develop toolkits that cities, states and college campuses can use to support safer decision making among young adults.

Nash’s mission is a personal one. In 2020, her son Will died while under the influence of psilocybin at 21 years old. The honors his memory by supporting harm reduction efforts on college campuses, raising awareness about psychedelic safety and advocating for reality-based substance use education across the country.

“We can wish our kids wouldn’t use these all we want
 but to me, education is the front line safety net,” Nash said. “When we downplay the risk and we fail to have those important discussions, we put people at risk and we're failing at informed consent.”

This series was reported with support of the .

An expert from Denver Health led the group in discussing which specific drugs are considered opioids and how to identify the telltale signs of an overdose, like clammy or cold skin, a limp body, and lips and fingernails that look purple or blue. The teens also learned how to administer the nasal spray, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, and then put their newfound knowledge to use practicing how exactly they would do it in the event of an emergency.

It’s scary stuff, but for many teens, it’s necessary knowledge in today’s world.

Suyash Shrestha, then a senior at Stargate School in Thornton, attended the event, but it wasn’t his first training. Shrestha spent much of his high school years trying to spread awareness about the concept of harm reduction to people his age. Harm reduction provides teenagers with honest information about drugs, along with advice for those who already use them about strategies for doing so more safely.

“Harm reduction is something that not a lot of teens or youth even think about or even know exists,” Shrestha said in an interview. “It ultimately creates that safer environment for the people who do need that information or do need those resources to come forward and get them
 That¶¶Òőap why we should continue pushing for that type of curriculum or education.”

Drug education, once ubiquitous in schools through the D.A.R.E. program, has struggled to find its footing in recent decades, even as changing cultural attitudes prompted marijuana legalization in many states across the country. In Colorado, a lack of consensus about approach and the logistical challenges of implementing curriculum have led to a patchwork of strategies where local control — which leaves it up to individual districts to decide the specifics of their health curricula — is the only standard.

The Denver Post is publishing a three-part series exploring why drug education has been slow to keep pace with the legalization of drugs like cannabis and psilocybin, and the ubiquity of deadlier substances like opioids. In the wake of the “Just Say No” movement of the 1980s and ’90s and a subsequent opioid epidemic, many local educators and organizations are embracing new philosophies about how to equip kids with the tools and information they need to lead successful lives.

Experts say drug education needs to be a more holistic endeavor — one that sees educators, community leaders, parents and youth working together to address the underlying causes of drug use and support healthier outcomes. For a generation of kids who have the world’s information at their fingertips, effective education must ditch fear tactics and instead rely on factual information presented honestly and transparently, they say, so that youth can make their own informed decisions.

As a member of the Rise Above Colorado’s Teen Action Council and Northglenn’s Youth Commission, Shrestha’s passion stems from hearing personal stories of Coloradans overdosing on synthetic opioids and from wanting to help anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation. After he first learned there was a medication that could literally save lives, Shrestha thought everyone deserved to know about it, including teens and other students.

Carrying naloxone was one way Shrestha saw he could potentially make a difference, and by teaching others to do so, he hoped to inspire his peers to be part of something meaningful — so that ultimately they make fewer harmful personal choices.

From ‘Just Say No’ to ‘just say nothing’

Putting trust into the hands of school students is a stark departure from historical norms. Traditionally, Americans have relied on school-based curricula and fear-based educational campaigns that aim to scare kids straight.

Stigmatizing drug and alcohol use as a black-and-white moral issue has a long legacy in the U.S., said Steve Sussman, professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, books such as and advocated bettering oneself and society by embracing purity, resisting temptation and finding a suitable partner.

The books, which were influential at the time, depicted two life paths for young men and women: They either grow up to be honest, decent citizens or, conversely, end up becoming degenerates depending on their life choices. For example, if , they would grow up to be honorable and venerable. However, if they choose to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, they would become moral and physical wrecks.

“There was nothing in between,” Sussman said. “, you’d either go the route of becoming a good mom, or you could end up going on the road to coquetry.”

Moral judgments like these became part of the school curriculum in the late 19th century, as the temperance movement gained momentum toward its goal of total abstinence. By 1901, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had successfully lobbied every state in the union to mandate its Scientific Temperance Instruction in schools. The curriculum — which it¶¶Òőap worth noting was criticized by scientists at the time — asserted alcohol was “a dangerous and seductive poison” and promoted total abstinence as the only solution for mental, moral and physical well-being.

Scientific Temperance Instruction waned after Prohibition ended in 1933, but fear tactics remained a hallmark of campaigns to combat drug use and abuse.

In 1936, the film “” warned parents about the dangers of marijuana, a “frightful assassin of our youth” more threatening than opium, morphine and heroin. Three decades later, in 1963, that narrative persisted when a presidential commission to warn teenagers that “although the use of a drug may be a temporary means of escape from the world about him, in the long run these drugs will destroy him and all that he aspires to.”

The most famous effort, though, is , or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Started in 1983 as a partnership between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified School District, it leveraged uniformed officers lecturing classrooms about various substances they saw on the job.

The goal was to teach kids to “Just Say No” to drugs, gangs, violence and peer pressure, echoing the country’s first lady at the time, Nancy Reagan. And it caught on quickly with the adults in power.

By 1994, D.A.R.E. was the most widely used school-based prevention program, reaching an estimated 5.5 million fifth graders in more than 60% of the nation’s school districts that year alone, The program continued to grow, and by 2009, it appeared in .

Despite its popularity, though, studies showed that D.A.R.E. wasn’t effective and that program participants were just as likely to use drugs as non-participants. In some cases, it had the opposite of its intended effect.

After developing a new curriculum in the early aughts, called Take Charge of Your Life, researchers at the University of Akron in Ohio found that seventh graders and ninth graders who went through the program from 2001 to 2006 experienced by 11th grade compared to a control group, and there was no reported change in active marijuana use. One positive effect was that seventh graders who used marijuana at the time they went through the program were less likely to continue doing so by 11th grade, the study found. In response to criticism, D.A.R.E. America retooled its curriculum for elementary and middle school students, starting in 2009.

D.A.R.E. still exists today, though curricula focus more on social-emotional learning and “helping kids learn to make healthy and safe decisions for a better life,” said regional director Dennis Osborn. Core lessons no longer include information about specific drugs, he added, though there are specialized units dedicated to vaping, fentanyl/opioids and marijuana.

About 2,000 law enforcement agencies currently participate in the program compared to around 7,500 at its height, according to Frank Pegueros, CEO of D.A.R.E America.

However controversial the content, D.A.R.E. provided the infrastructure, training and standardization necessary for drug education to proliferate widely. When that structure began to be dismantled in the 2010s, though, school-based drug education faltered, effectively leaving the generation of kids that followed to navigate the waters on their own.

“We went from ‘Just Say No’ to ‘just say nothing,’” said Rhana Hashemi, a social psychology researcher at Stanford University and founder of , which helps schools implement harm reduction education programs.

At the same time, a lethal substance was gaining traction. From 1999 to 2023, approximately 806,000 people died from an opioid overdose, with a significant increase in the number of deaths attributable to illegally made fentanyl and fentanyl analogs saturating the illicit drug supply over the course of the last decade, . Overdose fatalities involving synthetic opioids (excluding methadone) increased from 3,105 in 2013 to 72,776 in 2023, accounting for 91.7% of all opioid-related deaths that year, .

The widespread tragedy galvanized parents and politicians, who realized the pervasive “just say nothing” culture wasn’t cutting it.

Making their own decisions

The reason D.A.R.E. didn’t work, Hashemi said, is because of a cognitive dissonance between the messaging and what kids saw in real life. Warnings about the negative outcomes like overdoses, “brain rot” and addiction simply didn’t resonate. That paradox persists in prevention-focused social media campaigns today, .

“It¶¶Òőap a similar thing that¶¶Òőap happening now online, where our PSAs are still stuck in an abstinence-only mindset emphasizing these very serious consequences. But those messages are coming up alongside kids having fun and glamorizing their use,” Hashemi said.

That¶¶Òőap why Hashemi and other experts advocate providing teenagers with honest information about drugs and safer use strategies, known as harm reduction. “I would define it as both a set of strategies and knowledge, but also a philosophical attitude in how we should address things,” she said. “Our goal is not net sum prevention of use, it¶¶Òőap prevention of harms.”

For example, it¶¶Òőap helpful to know that a single serving of alcohol varies depending on whether you’re drinking beer, wine or liquor. That way, if young people choose to drink, they have a better understanding of how much they’re consuming.

“Young people are going to make their own decisions,” said Marsha Rosenbaum, a sociologist and harm reduction expert. “So we need to acknowledge that even if we don’t like the decisions they’re making.”

Rosenbaum helped introduce parents to the idea of harm reduction through a series of booklets entitled “Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens, Drugs, and Drug Education,” the first of which was released in 1999. Harm reduction was something of a taboo topic in the ‘90s, she said. And in many ways, it still is today.

Luke Niforatos, executive vice president of advocacy organization , believes that harm reduction has gone too far in normalizing substance use and abuse, and that it often sends the wrong message to America’s youth. While he supports making naloxone more accessible, other safer use initiatives, like supervised needle injection sites, do little to help drug users get treatment or work toward recovery, he said.

Conversations about beverages’ specific alcohol content, marijuana edible standard dosing and onset times, and the potentially therapeutic benefit of things like cannabidiol should be the responsibility of parents — not schools — Niforatos added.

“I understand there has to be some level of teaching in the schools, but you have to be really careful about that line because, at the end of the day, it quickly traverses over the line into teaching someone how to use instead of educating them,” he said. “I think the message needs to start with ‘do not use’ and then support that message with evidence.”

Rosenbaum and other advocates dispute that characterization. Abstinence is part of harm reduction — in fact, it¶¶Òőap the safest strategy of them all, she said. But presenting critical information about drugs in a nonjudgmental tone opens the door for trust building with kids and ultimately empowers them to make more informed choices, supporters say.

In a sign that public attitudes are changing, Rosenbaum turned “Safety First” into a comprehensive drug education and intervention school curriculum in 2017. It was subsequently acquired and revised by Stanford University’s REACH Lab in 2023, and Ìęfor free. With lessons about cannabis, hallucinogens, e-cigarettes, opioids and more, public health experts hope Safety First can help set a new standard for evidence-based classroom instruction. The second lesson in the curriculum provides an introduction to harm reduction.

More than 629 schools across at least 46 states have used the curriculum, including schools within 15 Colorado districts, said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, director of the REACH Lab. She estimates Safety First has reached more than 50,000 students, though it may be more than that since the curriculum is available for free online.

In broader efforts to prevent opioid deaths, naloxone has become widely available nationwide at hospitals, schools and even vending machines without a prescription. In Colorado, social media campaigns encourage young adults to by carrying the overdose reversal medication and testing their drugs for fentanyl.

Hashemi is encouraged by this shift, but she believes harm reduction needs to expand both beyond opioids and beyond the classroom. She hopes momentum continues and drug education addresses other prominent issues teens are dealing with, such as nicotine addiction and bad trips from psychedelics. She also wants to see social media campaigns, public service announcements and other digital campaigns reach kids online, where they already spend a lot of time. (A 2024 study suggests to explore.)

“When you expose the kids themselves to harm reduction education, they run with it,” Hashemi added. “But if we do not use fentanyl as a Trojan horse to do harm reduction around all drugs, this moment is going to sort of pass us, and we’re not going to be giving kids the comprehensive education that they’ve always deserved.”

This series was reported with support of the .

Billed as , 5280 Recovery serves about 100 teenagers who deal with substance abuse and addiction. The school uses strategies such as coaching and group meetings to help kids get sober — and stay sober — one day at a time, said Keith Hayes, who served as the school’s director of recovery from 2020 to 2026. Many of the staff are also recovering addicts with their own past troubles and life lessons to share.

On one “Winning Wednesday” last May, Hayes stood in front of bleachers full of students and handed out chips to those marking monthly milestones of continuous sobriety. It was the last Wednesday of the 2024-25 academic year and one well worth celebrating. That year, the student body boasted an average of 440 days sober from drugs and alcohol, the highest average since the high school’s opening in 2018.

“There is no chaser with anything that we do here at 5280. It is raw, it is uncut and it is real,” Hayes said in an interview. “The ability to be vulnerable with each other without judgment, without shame, is a beautiful thing. And I think the only way that real recovery works is that we can have difficult conversations about difficult things.”

After the presentation, recovery coach Brittany Kitchens then led a group discussion to talk about the challenges of staying sober during the summer without the structure and accountability of school weeks. She asked the teenagers in the room how they would fill their free time and who they would surround themselves with in the absence of their classmates.

Educators say it¶¶Òőap critical to build trusting relationships between students and adults, and to entrust student leaders to help shape the culture in their communities. For some, this also means working closely with students who get into trouble as well, and instituting deeper forms of development than simple discipline or punishment.

But approaches remain a patchwork across Colorado since the state’s “local control” form of governance leaves it up to individual school districts to determine curriculum content. When it comes to drugs, state law only requires that some type of prevention education must be taught, though it lacks specifics about what that should look like.

That means the breadth and depth of information covered varies “dramatically” between districts, said James Hurley, comprehensive health and physical education content specialist at the Colorado Department of Education.

This is the second story in The Denver Post¶¶Òőap three-part series examining how drug education has evolved alongside changing cultural attitudes towards substances like cannabis and psychedelics, both of which are now legal in Colorado.

The Post spoke with five districts, both urban and rural, about their approaches; we also attended classes, virtually and in-person, at two. Prevention and intervention efforts within these districts are fairly new. Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest district, developed its programming in 2015 in response to marijuana legalization. Comparatively, the small Gunnison Watershed School District in southwestern Colorado hired its first student wellness coordinator in 2024 to oversee health programming and partnerships.

Normalizing sobriety

Educators said nicotine, cannabis and alcohol are the most common intoxicants they see and hear about among school-age kids, though awareness about opioids and psychedelics is growing.

In 2023, 20.5% of high school students reported they currently drink alcohol, according to the latest data available from the , issued every two years by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The survey found 12.8% of high schoolers use marijuana, 8.7% vape nicotine and 3.1% smoke cigarettes.

Additionally, 3.5% of respondents said they take prescription pain medicine not prescribed to them or differently than prescribed. (The 2025 Healthy Kids Colorado survey results are expected to be published in June.)

Some of those statistics mark a notable decrease from the prior survey issued in 2021, when 23.6% of high school-aged kids reported drinking alcohol, and 16.1% reported vaping. The percentage of students who reported abusing pain medication also dropped, from 5.9% in 2021. Marijuana and cigarette use remained flat.

Despite concerns that underage marijuana use would skyrocket after legalization in 2014, rates largely remained stable before decreasing significantly in recent years. In 2019, the use rate among high schoolers was 20.6%,compared to 21.2% in 2015, according to the survey.

The 2023 survey added a new question asking high school-aged kids if they had ever used psychedelics, and 3.8% reported that they had.

The data underscores that most local teenagers are not using drugs and alcohol — even though they often overestimate the number of their peers who are. For example, 42.8% said they thought a majority of their peers binge drank — defined as four or more alcoholic drinks in one night — compared to just 12.1% who reported having done so in the previous 30 days, according to the 2023 survey.

“We need to normalize sobriety,” Hayes said. “We need to normalize that it¶¶Òőap OK to be comfortable in my own skin, I don’t need a social lubricant.”

A focus on trust and transparency

When talking to students about drugs, Colorado educators said transparency and trust are key to making an impact, especially for a generation with the world’s information at its fingertips.

During his tenure at 5280 Recovery High School, Hayes sought to create a judgment-free zone so kids felt comfortable being honest with their recovery coaches.

“Let’s stop telling people drugs and alcohol are bad because that’s not true. Because if they were so bad, would anybody be out here doing them?” Hayes said. “So we tell kids, ‘We love drugs, we know they’re phenomenal. We love alcohol. But if I truly work in an active program of recovery, that can be even more phenomenal.’ And that¶¶Òőap the messaging. Kids dig that.”

In more traditional high school settings, the tone is typically more tempered. But educators still aim to create an environment where trust and honesty are reciprocal with their students. Having trusted adults to confide in is one critical factor that ultimately supports youth emotional and physical well-being, experts said, and well-being is inextricably linked to substance use and abuse.

At Ridgway Secondary School, where enrollment in grades six through 12 totals just 150 pupils, Shawnn Row has a unique opportunity to build a rapport with students and their families. In addition to being a health teacher, Row serves as the athletic director, an English teacher and outdoor education coordinator, so he sees the same kids in numerous capacities for many years.

As the ninth graders filed into health class on a chilly February morning last year, it was clear they were immediately engaged. For one, Row was speaking their language. The first slide on the day’s presentation about marijuana featured a meme with a picture of a young boy smiling, his head flanked by text. “4/20? Puff puff pass? I’d rather pass today’s math quiz, thanks.”

As the kids repeated the punchline and giggled, Row stood at the front of the room with a welcoming smile. “Today we’re gonna talk about weed,” he said.

Health is a year-round class here, though the subject matter varies with the semester. Students receive sex education in the fall and drug education in the spring. Row began creating all the lessons himself several years ago after finding that out-of-the-box curricula didn’t resonate. His presentations combine scientific information about the adolescent brain, the known benefits and risks of various substances, and personal anecdotes from his own life.

Row appreciates that his school leaders believe drug education should be a continuous conversation, instead of something that¶¶Òőap relegated to a specific timeframe or initiative. That also gives him the flexibility to address what specifically interests students.

“Usually at the beginning of eighth grade (and) ninth grade health, I say, ‘Hey, write down topics you’re curious about or you’ve seen somewhere or you’ve heard about,’ and I’ll try to integrate them into the lessons I have planned already,” Row said.

Row’s lecture about cannabis didn’t sugarcoat the fact that it is widely available in Ridgway, a town of about 1,200 residents and three recreational dispensaries near downtown. The students were well aware of that, of course. You can smell it “walking around on any given Tuesday,” one said during class.

Row broke down the differences between cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol, explaining the psychoactive effects and how those distinguish the CBD products in grocery stores from the THC products in pot shops. He also shared a study tracking youth use and later life outcomes, and a story about how Kansas police once pulled him over and searched his car because of his Colorado license plate.

After class, then-freshman Izzy Katz said she learned a lot from the presentation, but still wasn’t sure if she considered marijuana good or bad. Some drugs, like fentanyl and heroin, have very clear harms, she said. Cannabis didn’t seem similarly dangerous, but it also didn’t seem benign like Vitamin C.

“I feel like marijuana is kind of put in that grey area where people don’t know how to categorize it,” Katz said. Her sentiment exemplifies the challenge of discussing once-demonized drugs that are now being reframed in light of legalization.

“I really hammer away on (the fact that) the teenage brain is not fully developed, and no matter what substance it is you put in your body, it¶¶Òőap going to have a bigger effect on you than it will on a 25-, 30- or 35-year-old,” Row said in an interview. “That is kind of the challenge with the legalization of weed and now psychedelics is, if adults don’t see it as harmful, the kids are less likely going to, as well.”Ìę

Row navigated this again when he tackled psychedelics during an April health class. While substances like psilocybin and LSD aren’t as popular as vaping, cannabis or alcohol, Row believes kids have been exposed to them enough through movies, social media and the news to warrant a discussion. And he’s probably right.

The freshmen were noticeably excited the morning they arrived and saw a presentation titled “psychedelics/hallucinogens.” After discussing the role of the brain’s thalamus and how psychedelics suppress its ability to filter all the sensory experiences of the world, one student suggested that this may be a good thing in moderation. After all, The Beatles “took LSD all the time and they had fire music during that timeframe,” she said. Another said she has read that microdosing ‘shrooms can help with anxiety.

Yes, psychedelics could boost creativity in some cases, and yes, research has shown they can be beneficial in therapy, Row responded. But the effects are not all just fractals and rainbows.

“If our thalamus wasn’t working, we would be in sensory overload all the time, and when people do acid, do mushrooms, usually once they wear off, they are completely depleted,” Row told the class. It can take a day or more to recover from a single 8- to 12-hour trip, he added.

Youth leaders cultivate culture

Three hundred miles away, substance prevention specialist Leah Raffa is tasked with disseminating drug education to the 89,000-plus Denver Public Schools students. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. Instead, Raffa and her colleagues in the Exceptional Student Services sector, which addresses mental health and student well-being, curate a menu of prevention resources and give each school autonomy over the best ways to serve their unique student populations.

Offerings include curricula that focus specifically on vaping, cannabis, prescription drugs and opioids, as well as programming designed to help students cope with stress and create meaningful connections with peers and adults at their schools. Where intervention is needed, DPS will deploy school social workers and psychologists to work directly with individual kids.

Perhaps one of the more interesting ways the district seeks to address whole child well-being is through a program called . The program, which resurfaces throughout elementary, middle and high school, teaches kids to identify and draw upon their personal strengths as a means for creating healthy habits and lifestyles.

At the high school level, Sources of Strength is an extracurricular activity intended to cultivate a group of peer leaders who effectively act as positive influences in their schools. At Denver South High School, the group includes about 10 students, freshmen through seniors, who work with onsite social workers on initiatives that amplify inspiring stories and build community within the student body.

While this program doesn’t directly educate kids about drugs, it works as a prevention mechanism by empowering students to shape their school’s culture and build a peer support network for those who might be struggling, Raffa said.

Rose Negler, who graduated from Denver South last spring, spent several years participating in Sources of Strength and said the most impactful projects were often some of the smallest. For one initiative, students wrote down the name of a positive friend on a slip of paper and then collectively linked them into paper chains that decorated the hallways. The skills she learned also benefited her theater class once when a student went missing. Negler was able to talk to other students who were stressed and help diffuse the situation.

“A lot of my Sources skills came in handy there because I knew what to do in that kind of crisis and I was able to handle it,” she said.

At 5280 Recovery High School, the students even sponsor one another. “We can talk to the kids ‘til we’re blue in the face about what we did to get sober, but it hits different when it’s a 16-year-old who has your same experiences and got their way out of that hole,” Hayes said.

Whole child solutions

In some districts, the most significant evolution has come in how educators react and intervene when students are caught using. In the Montrose County School District on Colorado’s Western Slope, strategies revolve around identifying environmental or circumstantial factors, such as food insecurity, that may be causing students’ drug use and connecting them with community organizations to help remedy those, said Megan Farley, the district¶¶Òőap manager of student health and safety.

“What we find is (a student) might be using nicotine or something, but that¶¶Òőap the tip of what¶¶Òőap actually happening,” Farley said. “We go in with a whole person, whole family approach. Like if it¶¶Òőap food that you need from the food bank, we hook you up with deliveries from the food bank.”

The district began shifting its approach in 2018, in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and injured 17 others. A decade ago, Montrose had no school social workers in a district serving roughly 6,000 students. Today, Farley manages a team of up to 20 nurses, therapists, social workers, behavior coaches and school resource officers to support students’ needs.

The district also maintains partnerships with local organizations, like Hilltop Community Resources, so that young people can be connected to specific groups or specialists they may need for support. All someone within the district has to do is express concern about an individual kid and Farley’s team will jump into action.

This ethos applies if a student gets in trouble for something other than drugs, too, said district spokesperson Matt Jenkins.Ìę“A child who is in crisis is not going to go away. We’re not going to expel our way out of that problem. We have to find an intervention and find the solutions in concert with that family to turn the corner.”

Most of the educators who spoke to The Post said they were reevaluating discipline methods in hopes of finding long-lasting solutions. Instead of pushing kids away with punishments like suspension, these educators want to bring the students closer.

Here, again, is where trust comes into play, said Hayes. Given that students at 5280 Recovery High School are in recovery, relapse is a real possibility. When that happens — as it sometimes does — the staff works to comfort and support the individual, connect them with groups and assure them they are not a moral failure.

“A lot of us come into recovery with so much guilt and shame for the things that we’ve done. These kids need love — lots of love and lots of grace and lots of understanding,” Hayes said. “Being able to be there for them and supporting them and encouraging them to keep going is very important.”

This series was reported with support of the .

Last year, the reported 6,116 children were victims of substantiated abuse or neglect, down from 10,779 in 2021, which itself had fewer reports than average because many schools remained remote.

Neglect consistently accounts for the vast majority of those cases, with about one in five involving abuse in each of the last five years. A few hundred children experience both abuse and neglect each year.

The state defines neglect as intentionally not meeting a child’s basic needs, such as adequate food or weather-appropriate clothing. When children go without meals because their parents can’t buy food, that isn’t considered neglect, but if a parent refused to feed a child, it would be. Some situations aren’t as clear-cut, with parents attempting to meet their children’s needs, but falling short because of mental health problems or substance use.

While the department can’t rule out changes in reporting, the number of calls about possible abuse or neglect has increased since 2021 and has held relatively steady since 2023.

But during that time, the share of calls flagged as meeting the standard to investigate child maltreatment dropped from about one-third to one-quarter. Counties can offer referrals to resources or abuse-prevention programs if a call suggests a family is struggling, but the problem hasn’t reached the level of abuse or neglect.

The state has tried to get upstream from abuse and neglect, raising awareness of resources and encouraging the general community to support families, said Thomas Miller, director of children, aging and community services at the Colorado Department of Human Services.

While a small share of people intend to hurt a child, the majority of abuse cases are avoidable if parents have the right coping skills, the material resources their families need and social support for the inevitable difficult times, he said.

“It’s always better to provide resources that equal prevention,” he said. “I believe that the data supports that we are making an impact.”

Nationwide, confirmed cases of child abuse , except for sexual abuse cases, which happened at about the same rate throughout that period.

Ultimately, the best way to protect children is to strengthen families with , Miller said:

• Increasing parents’ resilience during challenging times
• Offering help with concrete needs such as food and shelter
• Providing social support to families
• Educating parents about normal child development
• Helping children form bonds and regulate their feelings

The department has a to support families, including offering to babysit or run errands, pairing new parents with experienced mentors and donating gently used items. Even a small word of encouragement to a parent who is close to losing their patience with a fussy child can defuse that frustration before it boils over, Miller said.

“What you do, even if it seems like small things, can make a world of difference,” he said.

Families particularly need support during the first years of a child’s life, said Dr. Antonia Chiesa, a pediatrician on the child protection team at .

Over the last two years, 57% of the children the hospital treated for traumatic injuries attributed to abuse were under 1 year old, reflecting both how stressful that time is and that babies are particularly vulnerable to severe injuries, she said.

Studies are mixed on whether educating parents about the dangers of roughly handling a baby is an effective technique in preventing child abuse, Chiesa said.

“Upwards of 90% of people know that you have to be gentle with a baby and that it’s dangerous to shake them or slam them or throw them,” she said.

One of the best prevention tactics is to work with parents and others watching young children to develop a plan so they know what to do when their frustrations are rising, said Alicia Melven, an injury prevention and outreach specialist at Children’s.

That can include checking for possible reasons the child is crying, such as hunger or needing a diaper change; trying out a list of strategies to calm the baby; and designating a spot, such as a crib or playpen, to leave the child for a few minutes while the parent cools off.

“The No. 1 thing that I try to reinforce is that it’s always OK to put your baby down in a safe place,” she said.

Ideally, though, child abuse prevention will extend beyond parents, Chiesa said. Anything that communities can do to reduce families’ stress and isolation will decrease the odds of someone lashing out at a child or turning to a risky coping mechanism such as substance use, she said.

“This just isn’t a family or individual problem,” she said. “This isn’t about bad people. This is about normalizing how hard parenting can be.”

Nate Bustamante, a parent advocate who lives in Georgetown, said support for families struggling with poverty, addiction or mental health struggles can make a significant difference in a child’s life.

He went through more than 20 foster and residential facility placements after his mother lost her parental rights when he was 8, and had to fight to regain custody of two of his children as a young adult. Now, he and his wife have achieved stability for their three kids and are acting as kinship foster parents for a baby and an 11-year-old from their extended families.

Bustamante credited his family’s ability to break the cycle to relationships with caseworkers, staff at the juvenile facility where he stayed and others who believed in him and his wife. His mother, who recently died of complications of alcohol use disorder, didn’t have that help break her addiction and keep him and his brothers at home, he said.

“Along the way, people treated me like a human being. In the system, you can feel like a cog or a piece of paper,” he said. “I think it starts with connection and it starts in those really small moments.”

The bipartisan bill — — was introduced earlier this year with the intention of slowing gambling habits after a group of politicians heard warnings about increasing gambling addiction since Colorado legalized online sports betting in May 2020.

But mounting pressure from the gambling industry and a state budget crunch led the bill’s sponsors to remove the section that would have banned bets on individual athletes’ performances, which are the most popular wagers for gamblers because they come with higher payouts and are a big moneymaker for the sportsbooks because they come with higher odds.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, said prop bets and the ability to bet on every pitch in a baseball game or every pass in a football game are like having “slot machines in your pocket.”

“That perpetual availability is something that is very addictive,” he said.

Ball agreed the bill had a better chance of passing this session if the prop bet prohibition was removed, but he vowed to revive the legislative debate again. He wants to have a more holistic conversation about prop bets and parlays, and how they trigger compulsive gambling habits.

In prop bets, a gambler could bet on how many points Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray might score in a game or how many touchdown passes Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix might throw. Gamblers can place these bets before a game starts, and they can bet mid-game on things such as whether a Major League Baseball pitcher will throw a ball or a strike.

Sports-betting apps also allow gamblers to combine multiple prop bets to form parlays, which further increase odds in favor of the sportsbooks, but are wildly popular with gamblers.

Colorado already bans prop bets on college athletes’ performances.

Public health advocates believe prop bets lead to more addictive behavior, especially since gamblers can place the bets mid-game. Ball also worried that prop bets could impact the integrity of games because the high stakes put pressure on athletes and lead to harassment from gamblers when they fail.

The prop bet prohibition was removed, in part, because of the fiscal impact, Ball said. Tax revenue from sports gambling pays for water projects across the state.

The elimination of prop bets would decrease revenue by more than $2 million per year, according to the produced by the Legislative Council Staff. With the prop bet prohibition removed, the predicted revenue loss from the bill is an estimated $800,000.

Ball and public health advocates believe the bill still can help curb addiction.

The bill would also attempt to slow gambling habits by eliminating credit card usage on sports-betting apps, limiting the number of deposits a person can make into an account, curtailing television commercials and banning push notifications to cellphones from betting companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

It would also require sportsbooks to provide data to the state in an attempt to determine certain metrics, such as gambler demographics.

Joshua Ewing, executive director of , an advocacy group that pushes for better health policies in the state, said the remaining sections of the bill still could have an impact on gambling addiction.

“Those are all really important pieces that get at those problem gaming aspects,” Ewing said. “We wanted to be as strong as possible, but we still think the bill would be one of the strongest in the nation.”

The bill is expected to be debated on the Senate floor on Monday.

Two other bills addressing gambling are pending before the legislature.

would have barred the from developing an internet lottery scratch-off game, but that provision was removed. Now the bill only prohibits lottery players from buying tickets with credit cards. Critics, including Colorado’s casino operators, say the Lottery’s online scratch-off games will become online casinos rather than traditional lottery games.

would restructure the bodies that regulate gambling in Colorado. It would repeal the , which regulates horse racing, and put its duties under the supervision of the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission, which oversees casinos and sportsbooks.

The gaming control commission’s size would be expanded under the bill.

DO YOU HAVE A GAMBLING PROBLEM?

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado helps people who are addicted to gambling. Call 303-955-4682 or visitÌęcogamblerhelp.orgÌęfor help.

The Denver Post reports on the impacts of gambling in Colorado and wants to hear your stories about betting on sports. Please contact reporter Noelle Phillips at nphillips@denverpost.com if you are willing to talk about your experience.

DPS formed the 17-member committee in response to that requires all Colorado school districts to adopt a policy on student cellphone use by July 1. The law doesn’t require a ban; rather, it allows each district to come up with its own rules.

Cellphone bans are as schools try to reduce distractions in class and improve students’ mental health. Some educators are expanding technology prohibitions even further by .

While other Colorado districts , Denver, the state’s largest district with more than 89,000 students, does not. The committee of parents, educators, and community members was tasked by the district with coming up with recommendations, which the Denver school board heard for the first time Wednesday night.

that the DPS cellphone policy include:

• A ban on smartphones, smart watches, earbuds, and other technology not issued by schools from the start to the end of the school day for all students.
• A rule that phones must be inaccessible during school.
• Exceptions for students who need their phones for medical reasons or as part of a special education plan or disability accommodation.
• Training for parents on the district¶¶Òőap emergency notification process.
• Revised student discipline rules that include consequences for violating the ban.
• That if educators don’t implement the policy consistently, “there is an intersectionality with their evaluations.” The recommendations don’t say how their evaluations could be affected.

The last point is in response to teachers who said bans are hard to enforce if the teacher next door is more lax, said Sarah Almy Moore, a parent and former DPS employee who was on the committee. That inconsistency is partly what inspired the idea of a bell-to-bell ban, she said.

“The policy of putting the phones away just for in-class doesn’t seem to be working effectively, even though the students themselves might like it,” Almy Moore said.

Abraham Lincoln High School principal NĂ©stor Bravo was also on the committee. He said he supports a blanket ban because allowing students to have their phones at lunch or during bathroom breaks can become an opportunity for them to get “a quick hit of Instagram.”

“As we try to address the problem of cellphones as an addiction that compromises social interaction, we were thinking of a K-12 policy that is standard but it also prepares our children for when they become teenagers,” Bravo said.

School board members Marlene De La Rosa and Kimberlee Sia will take the lead on crafting a proposed policy based on the recommendations. The current timeline calls for them to introduce the policy next week, and for the board to take a final vote on June 11.

The district plans to survey families about the proposed policy in May. The board will also hear public comment about the proposal at its May and June meetings.

One teacher and three parents spoke at Wednesday’s public comment session. Two were in favor of a proposed ban and two were opposed.

Katie Sams, a teacher at one of the district¶¶Òőap alternative high schools, said her students are often older and dealing with complicated factors in their lives. They may need phones to communicate with employers, child care providers, or even parole officers, she said.

But parent Jamie Chesser said she wants her children, ages 12 and 14, to build strong friendships with classmates and relationships with teachers at school, not be isolated on a screen.

“We need to remove cellphones from schools for the sake of our children’s futures,” she said. “This is not punishment. It is for their good health. This is about love for the kids.”

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Our son, whose name we’ve omitted because of the stigma around this addiction, discovered gambling at age 11, although we didn’t recognize it then. We thought he was playing a computer game, but his addiction to the game was only the start.

By 12, a relative had introduced him to online poker. By 14, he was secretly buying Visa gift cards with allowance money to fund his habit. By 16, he’d lost over $1,000—and we were just beginning to understand what we were up against. He dropped out of college to play poker professionally. From there, the addiction only spread: blackjack, horse racing, online casinos. And once Colorado legalized sports betting in 2019 and it landed on every smartphone, there was no escape.

A 2025 report in the International Gambling Studies journal shows gambling before age 18 was associated with a more than 80% higher risk of problem gambling later in life. And unfortunately for us, that was exactly what the professional gambling industry knew would happen. By the time we understood what was happening, there was no going back.

Now in his early 30s, our son has struggled with depression and anxiety, bad credit and crippling debt, and ruined relationships. He’s been homeless at different points. Consider yourself lucky if you haven’t seen your child, the person you love most on this earth, endure these kinds of struggles.

But sadly, too many people have lived our story. At least 8 million people nationwide struggle with a gambling addiction. Among individuals with a gambling disorder, 1 in 2 will consider suicide, and 1 in 5 will attempt it. In Colorado, calls for help to the gambling addiction hotline have jumped by nearly 50% in the first year after sports betting was legalized.

We’re proud that our son is attending therapy and Gamblers Anonymous. But the industry knows he has gambled in the past and is not making it easy for him to quit. Online sports betting ads stalk him constantly. He gets frequent texts, promo codes and special offers to lure him back on the platforms. He can’t watch a March Madness game or listen to sports radio without hearing an advertisement aimed at reeling him back in. He’s trying to recover from an addiction the industry won’t let him forget.

We agree adults should be free to gamble responsibly. But freedom isn’t the question here. The question is whether billion-dollar industries should be free to use every psychological trick available to encourage and exploit addiction. Colorado has already decided that “legal” activity doesn’t mean unregulated for other industries: we legalized marijuana but banned child-targeted promotion. We allow alcohol but prohibit sales to intoxicated patrons. We prohibit liquor stores from giving away free drinks to keep you buying. Adults can purchase tobacco, but Marlboro can’t advertise during the Super Bowl.

Sports betting is the only vice where we’ve let the industry write its own rules. That¶¶Òőap why we’re strongly supportive of , the Online Problem Sports Gambling Act. SB-131 creates reasonable guardrails against the industry’s push of impulsive online sports betting and expands protections against underage gambling, helping prevent the kind of harm our family has experienced.

It does this by applying a common-sense framework: limiting deposits to prevent compulsive betting spirals; prohibiting “free bet” bonuses designed to hook new users; banning push notifications and texts that interrupt your day; restricting ads during live sports when kids are watching; and restricting credit card use that lets people bet beyond their means.

These new rules will help curb the predatory practices that addict young people to problem gambling and make it almost impossible for people like our son to stop.

It¶¶Òőap only been five years since sports betting was legalized, and we’ve already seen statistics and stories that reflect the concerning toll it¶¶Òőap taken on the health of individuals in our state, particularly young men. If we can’t come together now to set reasonable guardrails on this industry, we’re looking at a crisis that¶¶Òőap only just beginning.

All we ever wanted was to protect our child from harm. SB 131 won’t give us back the last 20 years, but it could spare another family the next 20. We urge Colorado lawmakers to do the right thing and pass this bill.

Carla and Joe Gennaro are parents of someone with a gambling addiction and residents of Lone Tree.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

THORNTON — A Colorado woman whose son died from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought through social media celebrated a this week against Meta and YouTube that she said opened the door for companies to be held responsible for harms to children using their platforms.

“The truth is out, and it¶¶Òőap time that they are held accountable for the design of the platforms,” said Kimberly Osterman, whose son Max died in 2021 at age 18. “They put profits over safety.”

Flipping through photo albums Thursday at her home in Colorado, Osterman reflected on “the days before social media. The days before the infinite scrolling lured him in.” Photos of him in frames with hearts and angel’s wings dotted the shelves.

Osterman said Max arranged to meet a drug dealer he connected with on Snapchat and purchased what he thought was Percocet. The pill was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl, and he was dead the next morning. Osterman is pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit that is separate from cases decided this week.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, both YouTube and Meta, which owns and operates platforms including Instagram and Facebook, liable for harms to children for designing their platforms to hook young users. The companies said they disagreed with the verdicts and may appeal.

And in a jury determined that Meta knowingly and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Meta said it would appeal.

Snapchat¶¶Òőap parent company, Snap Inc., in January just before the Los Angeles trial began. TikTok also agreed to settle, and details were not disclosed.

Osterman is part of Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or ParentsSOS, a group that includes parents who have lost children to online harm and advocate for more regulation. It has campaigned for the , pending federal legislation that would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent harm on platforms minors are likely to use.

She hopes to see social media companies enact strict guardrails, such as age verification technology, to prevent anyone under 18 from accessing the platforms.

“You think your kids are safe in their home, in their bedroom, but that¶¶Òőap not the way it is with the current status of social media,” she said.

Osterman knew Max used Snapchat to communicate with friends but did not realize the danger he was in. She said he loved lacrosse and wrestling and was academically brilliant.

The man who sold the pill to him, Sergio Guerra-Carrillo, was sentenced to six years in prison on two distribution charges in 2023.

Snapchat did not immediately comment Thursday when asked about Osterman’s case. The company has said previously that it uses cutting-edge technology to proactively find and shut down drug dealers’ accounts and blocks search results for drug-related terms.

It is not yet clear whether the recent verdicts against the social platforms will . But the verdicts demonstrate a growing willingness to hold major social media companies responsible and demand meaningful change. Tech watchdogs expect they will open the door for more lawsuits and regulations.

Dr. Richard Dart joined the in 1992, after working at a poison center in Tucson, Arizona. Since then, the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety, which includes the poison center and related research, grew from about 30 employees to 150, added a surveillance system to monitor prescription drug misuse, and led a clinical trial that changed how hospitals treat venomous snake bites.

The center’s staff, who are employed by Denver Health, answer calls from Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Hawaii.

Dart and the Rocky Mountain Poison Center have been leaders in expanding how centers contributed to health care and public safety, and quite a few younger toxicologists and poison center directors were trained there, said Dr. Alan Woolf, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who has worked with poison centers since the 1980s.

Dart’s tenure coincided with technological advances that allowed poison centers to respond more quickly and to better use their call data, Woolf said. Before personal computers, they had to rely on microfiche records of the thousands of products people could ingest and kept call records on paper, limiting the ability to do research, he said.

“I think Rick can be very proud of the role he played over the last 30 years,” he said.

While most people know poison centers as resources to call if their child swallows something potentially dangerous, they also train toxicologists and produce research on what substances Americans are ingesting, intentionally or not.

One of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center’s biggest accomplishments during Dart’s tenure was helping to pull off a clinical trial for a new rattlesnake antivenom, which became the preferred option in the early 2000s, he said.

Studying antivenoms is difficult because any given hospital will only see a few rattlesnake bites each year, which the poison center overcame by involving 15 medical centers and ensuring those hospitals’ emergency room doctors knew to randomize whether patients received only the old antivenom, or the new one in addition. They quickly realized patients getting the new one had better outcomes.

“You have to make sure that when that patient comes, you’re ready,” Dart said. “Luck favors those who are prepared.”

Dart also oversaw Denver Health’s acquisition of the or RADARS, which tracks misuse of prescription drugs with data from poison centers, reports from about 200 law enforcement agencies and surveys of the general public and people entering addiction treatment.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires drugmakers to conduct studies about misuse of their products, and most contract with RADARS to do that work, Dart said.

Purdue Pharma, the now-bankrupt maker of OxyContin, created RADARS in 2001, then sold it to Denver Health for $100 cash and $10 million worth of reports.

with advocacy groups including Public Citizen and Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, as well as some individuals who lost family members to overdoses, urging the FDA not to work with RADARS.

Advocacy groups, including Public Citizen and Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, have alleged that RADARS is too close to drug companies and provides scientific cover for their products. But Dart maintains that the system is entirely independent.

RADARS offered an early warning about misuse and addiction from prescription opioids, especially generic forms of oxycodone, Dart said. Purdue became one of the main villains of the opioid epidemic in the public mind because of their unethical sales techniques, but most people misused cheaper generic versions, he said.

“While Purdue did some very inappropriate things and are getting their just deserts, I think, OxyContin wasn’t the problem,” he said. “OxyContin never had more than a few percent of the market.”

In general, the data RADARS collected from people seeking treatment showed price, availability and purity matter most to those who use illicit drugs, which foreshadowed the shift from prescription opioids to heroin and fentanyl following a government crackdown on pill mills, Dart said.

They haven’t yet been able to answer how many people would have preferred to keep using prescription pills, if not for the crackdown, and how many switched to heroin or fentanyl because they offered a stronger effect for the same price or less, he said.

“There was this demand, and people are going to fill it,” Dart said.

It also tracked the rise of polydrug use. About half of people who reported using one recreational drug also said they used others when Denver Health purchased RADARS in 2006, but now 80% to 90% take two or more drugs, Dart said.

That suggests people aren’t especially particular about seeking one experience, he said — they just want to feel something different than they would without drugs.

“State government, federal government, they focus on one drug at a time,” he said. People who use drugs “just go to something else.”