New Hampstead High School senior Promise Cooper’s role as a Positive Peer Influencer for the the Mediation Center of the Coastal Empire helped a middle schooler at New Hampstead K-8 School to walk away from a situation when the student’s friends were smoking in a school bathroom.
“She [the middle school student] walked out,” Cooper said with a smile. Cooper was not in the bathroom when the smoking incident occured, but the middle school student felt comfortable enough to inform Cooper, who had previously led presentations on how to combat peer pressure to use drugs.
The Mediation Center aims to bring about more situations wherein students “refuse to use” through its continued partnership with the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System (SCCPSS) and the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team (CNT). The peer program educates high schoolers on how to inform adolescents at nearby middle schools of the dangers of drugs, particularly opioids like fentanyl.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in May that overdose deaths decreased by 3% in 2023 , Public Affairs Specialist Brian Tsai shared national 2023 provisional data that 1,597 teens aged 15-19 died due to drug overdoses. With final 2023 mortality rates not yet calculated, the CDC does not yet know exactly how many of those overdose deaths may be attributed to fentanyl.