Throughout the month of October, the renowned ‘Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks’ is hosting their annual drug awareness contest, highlighting their humanitarian mission to fix the drug problem in America. Spotlighting students, this contest aims to focus on the younger generation creating works telling people about the risks and dangers of illegal substances. This year’s theme for the essay is “The Best In Me Is Drug-Free,” allowing students to express their feelings on how to combat the taking in of drugs. In similarity, the video contest’s theme for this year is “Drug Abuse? No Excuse!” With the contests being open to any learners, every Arcadia student can participate, so long as they follow the rules(There are different ones for the essay, poster, and video) and submit before the deadline of November 10.

As a brief history, the Elks Club is a social fraternal order founded in 1868 focusing on extending brotherly love to all and just generally trying to make the world a better place. They have over 1.1 million members and more than 2,100 lodges across the country and are able to use these resources and facilities to help build connections between communities, bringing everyone closer together spending billions of dollars to help people, this organization is credible and currently seeks to highlight the goodwill of the nation.

The rules are simple, for writing the essay you must be in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade and the essay must be no more than 250 words, allowing for a short amount of artistry in a concise informational essay. For the video, there are three different age groups, allowing more people to participate. With these groups being Pre-High School, High School, and Postgraduate, people can work together or individually to make a short two to five-minute video focusing on making the right choice or being anti-abuse, essentially creating a video that, if picked, will end up sent up the chain to participate in the national contest as a state representative. This will mean the video could be shown on the Drugs Awareness Program’s media or on the Elks children’s website. Lastly, the poster is aimed at younger kids, with those from 3rd to 5th grade being able to participate. Winners of this contest can be featured on everything the video is featured, along with the Elks Drug Awareness Programs online coloring book.

From writing an essay or making a video to creating a poster, the possibilities of how creative students can get with this are numerous. The themes seek to highlight how past drug abuse shouldn’t reflect how people view using these body-altering substances again, as well as how there is literally no excuse for any sort of drug abuse. The poster contest has the same theme as the video, with both forms of art seeking to achieve a similar goal.

So, how do Arcadia students feel about this? Many students, like Sophomore Brandon Lee, have little interest. He empathizes with many in the student body, who tend to not want to listen to anything about drugs, as the teaching methods used can sometimes not connect well with students.

“I think that the Elks Drug Awareness Contest is a great way for students to learn and speak out about the importance of not abusing drugs,” added Freshman Mia Liu. She continues with the appraisal, stating, “This topic is especially important for today’s generation because drug abuse is becoming more and more romanticized in current media, and impressionable, young minds may not realize the lasting consequences of their actions.”

At the end of the day, the Elks National Drug Awareness Contest is an easy way for AHS students to reflect goodwill onto people and help spread important social messages. This contest has the power to show the masses the dangers of numerous situations, allowing them to make better decisions in the future.

Photographic Courtesy of EDWARDMKENNEDYINSTITUTE.COM