of the Mission Bay High School Youth Advocates expanded their campaign against underage drinking this year to include three participating pizzerias in Pacific Beach.
Sauced Pizzeria, Woodstock’s, and Luigi’s at the Beach all hosted the Youth Advocates ahead of the Super Bowl and let them place informational stickers on their takeout boxes.
The club is a group of students who seek to inform their peers about the impacts of substance abuse. The club’s media manager, sophomore Amira Azoulay, said they accomplish this by hosting year-round events on and off campus.
“We focus on raising awareness about teen substance abuse prevention,” Azoulay said. “We’ve hosted several events like Red Ribbon Week, we had the football team wear red ribbon stickers on their helmets for their home game, and we also had a lunchtime activity.”
Sophomore Savannah Long, the club’s co-president, said that advocating healthy lifestyle choices is especially important against a backdrop of harmful depictions.
“There’s a lot of normalization, we see a lot in the media of teens drinking and using substances (so) that it feels normal, but it’s not healthy for us,” Long said. “In spreading awareness about it, it really teaches kids how what we see in the media isn’t necessarily real.”
The Advocates also cite the impact of substance abuse on young people, particularly at a time of critical development in life.
“There’s a bunch of research coming out recently showing how substance abuse can really have enormously detrimental effects on the teenage brain,” Azoulay said. “We feel it’s important to communicate that with our peers, especially with the ongoing fentanyl crisis and with all that’s happening with vaping. We find it’s important to get our message out there and help students stay away from that sort of thing.”
The club is guided by adviser Stacy Chiles, a youth development specialist with the nonprofit Social Advocates for Youth (SAY) San Diego. SAY San Diego receives funding from the Health and Human Services Agency of San Diego County to work both in youth substance abuse prevention and leadership development.
“Mission Bay Youth Advocates really falls under a unit called community engagement, (and is) one of our youth leadership programs in the north central region that focuses on reducing youth access to drugs and alcohol,” Chiles said.
Last year, club leaders were mostly seniors, who when they graduated left returning with big shoes to fill. This presented the club with the opportunity to try some new strategic approaches.
“Last year we lost a lot of our club seniors, so this year we had to recruit a lot of new ,” Long said. “A lot of our conversation has been about what we wanted to do this year.”
For the past few years, the club has engaged in a local campaign called a “Sticker Shock.” The idea is based on a similar campaign run by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in which stickers advocating against substance abuse were applied on bottles of alcohol in participating shops.
The Youth Advocates took this model and applied informational stickers on pizza and takeout boxes at local restaurants.
“It’s meant to be a friendly reminder,” Azoulay said. “Imagine you’re going to get pizza and you’re having a good time, and you make the decision that you will drive home and you see our stickers. Maybe you take a step back and refrain from drinking or have someone else drive you home.”
In previous years, this campaign was run almost exclusively through Woodstock’s Pizza on Garnet Avenue, typically during December. The goal was to apply enough stickers on takeout boxes to be seen at holiday parties and reach a broad audience.
“Home parties are the number one source of alcohol for teenagers,” Savannah Long said. “This event reminds people who order pizzas not to allow underage drinking at their party.”
The Youth Advocates shifted their focus this year,choosing to run their campaign ahead of the Super Bowl, in the hopes their message would reach an even wider audience than with holiday parties.
“It was a decision we took around the beginning of the year,” Azoulay said. “We felt that it would be more impactful. Pretty much everyone celebrates the Super Bowl or throws a watch party.”
In addition to adjusting their aim, the club also expanded participation with local businesses.
This year the club was able to include Sauced Pizzeria and Luigi’s at the Beach, in addition to their returning participant, Woodstock’s.
“We’d been doing the Sticker Shock event for a few years at Woodstock’s, but Sauced does a lot of events for football games and stuff,” Long said. “The owners are really involved in the Mission Bay community already. We reached out to Luigi’s at the Beach because we wanted to expand the event and (the owner) was really interested in that. It was great to have her play such a big role in this.”
The campaign’s main event was on Feb. 7 at Sauced Pizzeria, then continued on Feb. 10 at both Woodstock’s and Luigi’s at the Beach. Club held a press conference at Sauced, giving information on the impacts of underage drinking.
Christina Cunningham, owner of Sauced Pizzeria, also spoke at the event, offering a parent’s perspective about the importance of starting a dialogue with teenagers about alcohol.
Club estimate that between 300 and 400 stickers were applied to takeout boxes during their campaign. Long said achieving this expansion for their campaign has been a morale booster for the club. Chiles echoed the sentiment, praising the drive of the team in the community and within the club.
“This year our sophomores are taking the initiative and leading the team, not only in the areas around substance use prevention but really leadership development, creating a community within the club and facilitating team building to where I’m blown away by their ion,” Chiles said. “They’re totally motivated and they’re doing really good work. I’m really proud of them”
Long said momentum from this year’s sticker shock is motivational for years.
“A lot of us in the club still have a few years at Mission Bay,” Long said. “I think it will be great to be able to continue doing this event annually.”
The Youth Advocates are now turning their attention to their next campaign, a submission-based art showcase that features the art of Mission Bay students as it relates to the theme of substance abuse prevention. They would like to exhibit selected works in their school library around the end of March for National Drug Fact Week.
