“Just Say No’ isn’t working. Do we need a new approach to teaching about addictive products in schools? YES!

Montage created by Joe Woof on ChatGPT using drawings by groups of 13 year old pupils during a school wellbeing lesson in 2025.

Do you think your child's Wellbeing Curriculum is covering what you want it to?  Does it really help prepare them for the environment we have built for them?  What do your kids themselves think could be improved?  What would they like to know more about to help them? Do you even know what your school’s approach is?

Joe Woof explains: "The environment we now live in bombards children with addictive products - social media, alcohol, pornography, gambling, junk food, computer games and vapes - with billions spent on marketing and promotion. We then expect them to be able to resist this onslaught, and admonish and blame them when they don't.  This is happening at a time when their brains are particularly vulnerable to persuasion and dependency and has huge repercussions as their brains will develop differently when exposed repeatedly to these products.

Currently we are overly invested in the distinction of over and under 18.  Society deems that because these products are illegal for children, and we have told them not to do it in school and aw parents, our job is done.  It feels like success when the 'good' kids resist, but we don't question our approach when the 'bad' kids don't - we just blame them and punish them because they haven't listened. It's not seen as a failure of the environment it's seen as a failure of the kids."

This starts early on in schools.  The school wellbeing or PHSE curriculum is founded on 'Just Say No' type lessons where experts are brought in to tell pupils how bad a product is and why they mustn't do it, usually via powerpoint.

There is little opportunity to really talk about these issues in schools in a non-judgemental way, we are creating another environment where they can't speak about what is causing them harm for fear of punishment.

What would a different approach look like?  We decided to pilot a new concept in a school near us for vapes.

So instead of simply telling them to avoid vaping, the structure of the lessons aims to help them understand the environmental pressures that influence them around vaping, the potential impact on their bodies, minds and choices, and begins to build the self-understanding which may help them navigate the inevitable pressure they’ll face as they grow up with vapes a continued presence in their lives.”

Attached below is a short document outlining the approach, his observations on how it went, what we learned and a few thoughts on what might be improved for future, particularly through the involvement of young people in the design of the curriculum and lesson formats.   For fun he then put the collaborative drawings the 13 year old students made of 'a typical vaper', through ChatGPT to see what came out, a couple of examples above.

If you have thoughts we would love to know and if you are interested in learning more about our approach and better still funding our next stage of research and development on this, please email hilary@societyinside.com and Joe@societyinside.com