Most school districts in the United States participate in the DARE Program. What was your experience, either in DARE or in whatever substance abuse prevention program your school used? What activities did you do? What do you remember most about it? Given what you know about effective prevention programs, was your program an effective one? If not, what would need to change for it to be more effective?

Over the past few years, the nation has been engaged in a discussion of whether or not marijuana should be legal for recreational use, legal for medical use, or illegal. This discussion is recent enough that there is no great deal of research on how changing views of marijuana will affect children and adolescents. What research questions would you want to ask with respect to this? What do you expect that you would find?

The United States has been experiencing a dramatic spike in opioid use and overdose in the past few years, tied, in part, to prescription pain medication use. Concerns have been raised that the country has not responded quickly enough to this crisis. What role do you see for psychologists and those in related fields in halting this epidemic?

Given the difficulties in using adult criteria for substance dependence among children and adolescents, how would you alter the criteria to better suit this age group? How do you know if use is typical or problematic?