Cameron Daniel, a Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office deputy who works as a school resource officer at Aspen High School, listens to the discussion during an Aspen-Pitkin County Healthy Futures Coalition meeting at the Red Brick Center for the Arts earlier this month. When it comes to substance use prevention, Daniel says, “The common message that we’re getting out is like, ‘delay, delay, delay,’ and [we’re] providing them with research that shows how their brains develop, so that they feel more empowered to start making decisions, as opposed to being told what to do.”
You could spend a few months going through survey data and headlines and interviews and figure that Aspen has earned its party-town reputation. Including — maybe especially — among teens.
In 2023, nearly a quarter of Aspen high schoolers said they’d used marijuana in the last 30 days. More than 43% reported drinking alcohol in that same window; more than 30% self-reported binge drinking. More than 17% of them vaped.
Every one of those statistics is roughly double the state average — or more, according to the Healthy Kids Colorado survey that comes out every two years. The numbers are also higher than the Roaring Fork School District downvalley, and the regional average that includes other mountain-town communities along the I-70 corridor and Grand County.
Aspen high schoolers don’t just experience higher rates of substance use, either. In survey data that goes back to 2015, they also report more relaxed attitudes toward underage drinking and easier access to drugs and alcohol than their peers across the state and the region.
Plus, students see the stuff everywhere: not just through the windows of downtown liquor stores and pot shops but at picnics, concerts, sports games and ski days. It’s the cigarette butt on the sidewalk, sure, but also an open can of spiked seltzer in a car-door cup holder. It’s champagne and hard kombucha next to the Powerade in the grocery haul.
At “a lot of these social gatherings in Aspen” — not only the parties but also the X Games and the music festivals — “a lot of people have the mindset that you can’t have fun unless you’re under the influence of some sort,” said Eleanor Carroll, a rising senior at Aspen High School.
“Partially it is the social pressure, and everyone around you is doing it, so, [you think] ‘Oh my gosh, what if I try? It will be fun,’” Carroll continued. “But it’s also the internal pressure. It’s like, ‘Oh, if I do it once, it won’t hurt me.’ Or it’s ‘just to see what it’s like.’ … Peer pressure can be the start of it, but ultimately, it’s you who continues to do it.”
Her classmate Yale Gieszl, a rising junior, said that “trickles down to the kids, because they’re surrounded by so much partying all the time, and so much alcohol.”
“Kids do what they see,” Gieszl said.
But kids also tend to overestimate how many of their classmates are getting into drugs and alcohol — a pattern that holds true across the state and across multiple years of survey data.
Flip around those Healthy Kids Colorado stats, and you’ll see that three-quarters of Aspen high schoolers aren’t using marijuana. More than half of them aren’t drinking alcohol on the regs. More than two-thirds aren’t binge drinking. Most of them aren’t vaping, and it isn’t as popular as it used to be. Younger demographics don’t report nearly as much access or substance use as their older peers, and Aspen middle schoolers actually report less substance use when compared to the state average in some categories.
Survey data also shows that the majority of Aspen teenagers still believe it’s wrong or very wrong for someone their age to be using drugs or regularly drinking alcohol (even if some of them are more lax than their peers). Most students think their parents would frown upon it, too.
Compared to other kids around the state, Aspen students report higher rates of participation in sports and extracurriculars, and higher rates of involvement in family decisions — all protective factors that can keep kids on a healthy path. They also report lower rates of prolonged sadness and hopelessness than their peers.
And just because they have more access than students around the state, that doesn’t mean they’re always taking advantage of it. Even if you account for some students underreporting their own use on the survey — and some kids not taking the survey at all — there’s still a difference between perception and reality.
So, that idea that “everybody’s doing it?” Turns out, they’re not. And there’s a growing community of adults who aren’t, either. Aspen also has a reputation for its pursuit of health and wellness, after all.
“There’s a big movement happening, a big sober movement,” said Becky Gordon, the executive director of the local nonprofit A Way Out that offers support for substance-abuse treatment and recovery. “You see more sober bars coming out. You see mocktails on almost every menu. You see more language around ‘sober-curious.’… And so why are our kids getting this message that it’s everywhere and everyone’s doing it, when that’s maybe shifting?”
Students like Gieszl and Carroll recognize that. So they’re trying to change what kids see, through a group called the “Youth Advocates for Healthy Futures.” They have the backing of a new coalition to do it. And if all goes according to plan, they could change what kids do, too.
Keri-Lyn Colman speaks about the protective factors and risk factors that impact youth substance use during an Aspen-Pitkin County Healthy Futures Coalition meeting at the Red Brick Center for the Arts earlier this month. The coalition aims to reduce rates of underage drinking and drug use through education and cultural shifts in the community. Colman was once an advisor to the federal Drug Free Communities Support Program and now runs consulting and technology companies focused on behavioral health.
Stewarding a culture shift
The youth advocates are a group of a dozen teenagers who want to shift this community’s culture around substance use. They’re the ones who documented the cigarette butt, the spiked seltzer, the Powerade next to the champagne: It’s part of a “Photovoice” project that they’re presenting to local leaders to highlight how often youth are exposed to drugs and alcohol while also capturing the ways they choose healthy habits, too. (One compilation also includes footage from soccer and basketball games and a photo from flying a plane over the mountains.)
They have visions not only of sharing their perspectives but actually enacting change from it. And they have support of the Aspen-Pitkin Healthy Futures Coalition to help.
The coalition has its own paid director, Kayla Bailey, plus about 30 to 35 active adult members from 12 different sectors of the community, a six-figure annual budget, and a workplan with both measurable objectives and clear strategies to achieve them.
The workplan outlines two main goals: To “establish and strengthen” community collaboration in the effort “to address youth substance use” — and then, to actually address it, by dealing with “the factors in a community that increase the risk of substance use” and on “promoting the factors that minimize the risk of substance use.”
The coalition is mainly targeting alcohol, marijuana and vaping because those are the most prevalent with Aspen youth (though they recognize the dangers of harder drugs, too). They want to decrease alcohol and marijuana use among Aspen middle and high school students by 20% from the 2023 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey baseline. They want more youth to think it’s wrong for someone their age to use alcohol or marijuana and more youth to understand the risk of harm from marijuana. They also want to reduce social and retail access to alcohol. If it works, they’ll see a reduction in the percentage of Aspen high schoolers who think it would be easy to get their hands on some booze.
Their funding comes from the federal Drug Free Communities Support Program, city of Aspen tobacco tax funds and the Lewis Foundation. The budget was $250,000 for the first year, with half of that coming from the Drug Free Communities Support Program, but it could be subject to some fluctuations in future years amid federal budget changes, according to Bailey.
Some of the money covers the director’s salary and benefits; some goes to conferences and administration. And some of it goes into the pockets of the teens themselves, who can choose between $20 an hour or volunteer service hours for their participation.
The total number of youth advocates could soon rival that of the adult coalition: Bailey said she’s hoping to have 20 to 25 students in the coming year, with a junior group of fourth through seventh graders in addition to the cohort of eighth through 12th graders. The earlier you start this substance-use prevention work, the better, Bailey said, because students are already getting exposed to the stuff in middle school.
She wants the students to lead this initiative — to tell the adults in the room what the problem is and how they’d like to address it.
“They’re going to be the change factor here,” Bailey said.
Not your parents’ prevention program
She wants to be clear that this is “not an abstinence campaign,” but rather one focused on “substance misuse education and prevention.” The coalition isn’t pushing some idea that Aspen should return to its prohibition days. But they do believe this community could rethink the way it approaches substance use, and create an environment in which it doesn’t seem so prevalent.
So they’re talking about how they can reduce kids’ exposure and access to drugs and alcohol, and they’re wrestling with the conundrum of permissive parents who think it’s OK for kids to drink if they do it safely at home. The coalition is also looking at “protective factors,” like making sure kids have substance-free spaces where they can gather and educating parents on how to talk to kids about drugs and alcohol.
To that end, Bailey recently met with a city of Aspen official earlier this summer to discuss plans for the Armory building — slated to become a downtown community hub — and suggested adjustments to the layout so a bar and alcohol aren’t such a focal point; she also told coalition members that she wants to get input from youth on what they want to see in the space.
Another coalition member, Aspen One’s Vice President of Community Engagement Michael Miracle, pointed to the company’s own efforts to facilitate kids’ access to on-mountain activities year-round, and wrote in an email that “as part of our participation in the coalition, we’ll explore other ways Aspen One may be well-positioned to create solutions to some of the factors that contribute to young people’s choosing to experiment with alcohol and drugs. Being bored with no place to hang out is one of them.”
Members of the coalition also point out that beyond community spaces, parents and guardians are the ones who usually set the example for their kids. But at the same time, they recognize it’s not always a matter of laissez-faire attitudes.
“I would love to say, ‘It’s up to the parents, the parents need to get involved,’” Gordon said. “But you’ve got parents hurting and struggling from their childhood as well, who may have never learned that what happened to them, or the way that they were raised, is going to affect their kids,” Gordon said.
They might also be facing challenges like the stress of multiple jobs and the high cost of living.
“They may not have dealt with their own issues yet,” Gordon said.
“That’s why teachers and coaches and coalitions need to be available to help educate,” she added. “There’s so many touch points in children’s lives where we can reach them.”
This coalition isn’t a replacement but a complement to substance-use education programs that are already in the schools, covering both prevention and harm-reduction strategies. The Soundcheck Prevention Network is one of the key players, working with the Aspen School District and Aspen Family Connections on both student education and qualitative community assessments they call “Soundboards.”
The Soundcheck team focuses on topics like the science of brain development, mental health and social norms rather than the discredited scare tactics of programs like D.A.R.E. The message to students and parents alike is less “just say no,” and more like “saying no now will serve you better in the long run.” Also, that “saying no is a pretty normal thing to do.”
Soundcheck founder and CEO Will Straughan cites “very strong data and research” that if a kid starts drinking before the age of 15, they face a “four to five times higher chance” of developing an alcohol use disorder later on, compared to someone who waited until they were of legal age. That research says that every year you wait, the better your chances of having a healthy relationship with substances.
And while it might seem like kids will be kids — or like, “this is what kids do to have fun” — “it’s not the only norm,” said Souncheck’s Director of Program Development Lee Bergeron.
That messaging seems to resonate with students like Gieszl.
“At a young age, especially below 21, if these minors are utilizing drugs and alcohol, it’s going to have the most dire effects on their development and their brains and their ability to function as an adult,” Gieszl said.
By “educating everybody” — adults and youth alike — ”what we’re really trying to do is make sure these kids grow up to be able to make their own decisions,” Gieszl added.
Aspen-Pitkin County Healthy Futures Coalition Director Kayla Bailey, right, speaks at a coalition meeting at the Red Brick Center for the Arts earlier this month. The meeting involved both adult members and “Youth Advocates for Healthy Futures” like Aspen High School student Isla Rich, left.
More than anything, this effort is about youth voice, putting the kids in charge of their own culture. Students like Gieszl and Carroll will tell it like it is, and challenge adults’ assumptions about what works and what doesn’t.
“Sometimes really strict parents, they just raise sneaky kids,” Carroll said. “It’s hard, because there will be kids who obey what their parents are saying, but there will also be some who rebel against them.”
So, adults, try this instead: “Something I think is really important — this is something that my parents have really enforced — is just being open and honest and really just saying, ‘You can ask me anything,’ and meaning that,” Carroll said. “I think it’s really important to raise your kids to have a close relationship with you and feel like they can tell you things, because then, if they are suffering from this, they feel comfortable approaching you for support.”
The youth advocates went through an interview and application process to prove they weren’t just in this for the resume-booster or the cash. This cohort said they’re motivated by the prospect for change because they care about the wellbeing of their peers, and they don’t like to see their classmates lose out on valuable opportunities.
“I just don’t want to see bad things happen to people with a lot of potential because of substance use,” rising sophomore Isla Rich said after a recent coalition meeting. “It seems like a waste.”
But they’re also invested because they’re the ones driving the movement.
Members of the youth cohort are active participants not only in their own group but in adult coalition meetings. After one member suggested bringing in speakers with lived experience of substance misuse at the June meeting, rising freshman Edy Liddington-Goss chimed in to suggest that might not actually click with students.
“A lot of kids, especially our community, just think, ‘Stuff like that can’t happen to me,’ … ‘I’m being more careful. I’m with my friends, whatever,’” Liddington-Goss said. They think that “they’re going to be safe no matter what, because they have their friends doing it — like, ‘Everyone does it,’ and, ‘Just because it happened to one person doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to me.’”
Point taken. According to the students, it feels both fulfilling and empowering to have such a leading position in this effort.
“It’s made me really happy to have a voice in something like this and to be a part of something like this,” Liddington-Goss said after the meeting. “And I think that we are definitely starting to plan on doing bigger things and help our community more and make more of an impact and difference.”
Rich feels much the same way.
“I noticed a culture at our schools where we’d have a lot of adults — parents, teachers or just like, the school board — who were really trying to help students, and the students were just not responding. They weren’t listening. Like, they didn’t seem to care,” Rich said. “And I thought that with the adult coalition and the youth together, they could probably [make] a bigger impact that would actually reach the people they’re trying to.”
The grown-ups think so, too.
“We tend to look at adolescence as this disease that needs cured — [that] we need to, all of a sudden, just bypass the riskiest eight developmental years of their life, because, yeah, there are consequences and there are losses, and I get that,” said Cameron Daniel, a Pitkin County school resource officer based at Aspen High School who’s part of the Healthy Futures Coalition. “But it’s not something that needs to be cured. What I think works is listening to them, … knowing that, no, they may not have all the answers, but empowering them to kind of make decisions for themselves.”
They need “factual information,” Daniel said — “information that is accurate, so that they, one, feel empowered to just choose what they want to do with that information, and two, when they land in a spot that isn’t what they really intended on doing, they now get to own it,” Daniel added. “They have some ownership in their journey moving forward, opposed to just being at the mercy of whatever society, parents, whoever is telling them what to do.”
You’ve also got to give kids some credit for their autonomy, Daniel said.
“I could be wrong, but when you’ve seen it, been there, seen that — like, seen people barfing and sick [from drinking]” downtown, or acting reckless at a party, that “might actually be an example of what you don’t want to be, not the example of what you want to be.”
‘Just one kid’
The thing is, local leaders have tried this work before. If you go back in the archives of this very newspaper, you’ll find a quote from the Aspen School District superintendent in 1999 saying the community needs to clean up its act on substance use — and it wasn’t the only time he said it. (That district leader, the late Tom Farrell, was adamant about the importance of substance-use prevention and started a number of local initiatives in that sphere, including Aspen’s Project Graduation program and a class that put students in touch with agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency.)
Prior to this current coalition, there was a state-grant-funded prevention effort led by Community Health Initiatives, with a focus on the broader Roaring Fork Valley. Before that was the longrunning Valley Partnership for Drug Prevention, and before that, the Aspen Substance Awareness Project that earned a major federal grant in the 1990s. That grant would fund efforts to “prevent alcohol and other drug use among youth, strengthen family systems, and establish community policies and norms that deter substance abuse and promote a drug-free environment,” according to one Aspen Daily News report.
Sounds a lot like the Healthy Futures mission?
Members of this coalition recognize that. But they still point to the research that shifting social norms does work. Other efforts funded by the federal Drug Free Communities Support Program have already proven successful. And there’s evidence, according to one study from 2010 and according to many prevention experts since then, that initiatives with “a coordinated, comprehensive message across multiple delivery components are most effective in terms of changing behavior. Just look at cigarettes, some members say: it took a coordinated effort, and it took a long time, but eventually, smoking went out of style.
That doesn’t mean the work is ever really done, though: In some circles of celebrities and young people, cigarettes have been making a comeback, popping up on social media and street corners while those heavy-hitting campaigns about the dangers of smoking are harder to come by than they used to be.
And while there are examples of past efforts to involve students in prevention work, both current coalition members and people who were involved in earlier programs say this initiative is different because of the degree to which youth are leading the charge. Bailey thinks that could be the secret to success.
“As somebody who’s worked in behavioral health for a long time, and here [in Aspen] for four-and-a-half years, we’ve known that substance use is an issue. We see community members dying from it, and we’ve all thought of ways to help and solutions, but they’ve never really stuck,” Bailey said. “This is the first time where we’ve really had the youth telling us what the issue is and what the solution needs to be.”
That doesn’t really make it easy, and it doesn’t make this effort a sure-fire thing. We won’t really know for years whether the coalition has achieved its goals of measurable reduction in youth substance use.
“Do I think that in a year’s time, we’re all going to look back and be like, ‘Wow, we did it. The culture in Aspen is completely different’ — I don’t know that that’s going to be the case,” Bailey said.
But that’s not the only way to measure success. Just because past efforts didn’t eliminate youth substance use completely doesn’t mean they weren’t worth doing — and they could have still had valuable impacts on the lives of individuals. When there’s funding and data involved, “we tend to look at more macro or mezzo change,” Bailey said. “And I think sometimes we forget about the micro, and how important that is as well.”
“I think we can at least shift the perception of ‘everybody’s using, and you have to use [drugs and alcohol] to have fun,’” she said. “And I think that if that alleviates at least one person from eventually dying from their use who is a part of this community, then it’s well worth it.”
Coalition members say it over, and over, and over again, and so do the youth advocates: It just takes a single success story — a single trajectory changed — to validate all of their efforts.
“If we can help just one person, or just five people, then that’s a win for us,” Gieszl said. “It’s a difference in their lives, and hopefully that difference in their lives might affect people around them and continue to help other people.”
It’s like a “domino effect,” Gieszl said. And besides, “Nothing’s ever going to get better if nobody does anything.”
As Bailey put it: “You always keep doing the work, right?”
A valleywide impact
Aspen Family Connections ramped up substance use prevention work with money from the city of Aspen tobacco tax back in 2021 and was the organization that landed the federal grant for the Aspen-Pitkin Healthy Futures Coalition last year, under the leadership of the family resource center’s director Katherine Sand. Kayla Bailey, whose work is specific to Healthy Futures Coalition, joined the team earlier this year and works out of the Aspen Family Connections office at Aspen Middle School.
This coalition is focused on Aspen and Pitkin County (as the name implies) because its funding is tied to that region, Bailey said.
But the effort also includes representatives from organizations with broader reach, and the youth advocates often meet midvalley. The coalition recognizes that they’ll need to think beyond the roundabout, as some students and families commute from further away. And they aim to increase outreach and collaboration not only among sectors of profession — like law enforcement, religious institutions and media — but also among sectors of identity, including the Hispanic and Latino communities of the Roaring Fork Valley.
“Most of us are regional [representatives], so we do expect that impact to be regional,” Bailey said. “And we do hope that this will grow, that this is not … a five-year funding program where we check out all the boxes and then it’s done, but that it does impact valleywide.”
