From the Red Ribbon Coalition website:

After Kiki Camarena was murdered by drug traffickers, the Red Ribbon Week began as a visible way of increasing community awareness regarding the need for early and continued prevention efforts. Prevention was seen as the most effective way of reducing the demand for illegal drugs and the illegal use of legal drugs.

The Red Ribbon Week Pledge is “No Use of Illegal Drugs, No Illegal Use of Legal Drugs.”

This pledge represents a no-nonsense, clear and consistent promise that students, parents, teachers and community leaders should be willing to make - and more importantly - expected to keep!

In 2009, the City of Irvine Community Services staff developed the following pledge for use at Irvine elementary and middle schools:

"I pledge to make healthy choices, to be a positive role model for my friends, and to support the mission of Ribbon Week “No Use of Illegal Drugs, No Illegal Use of Legal Drugs."

We encourage you to carefully consider the words you use when designing Red Ribbon Week pledges, slogans and themes. “Drug free”, for example, is a rhetorical term spoken often without consideration of its literal meaning.

Consider the following:

• Our society uses medications to assist with both physical and mental health related illnesses.
• Medicines prescribed by a physician and over the counter (OTC) remedies such as aspirins, cough syrup, antibiotics, pain killers and other legal drugs are used to treat common, everyday illnesses.
• There are students and teachers at your school who are not “drug free” - even though they are obeying the law. You need to include - rather than exclude - them in your prevention efforts.
• Caffeine is so commonly used, it seems adults may have forgotten that it too is a drug.
• Prescription and OTC drugs are advertised more than ever in the media. Young people cannot turn on the television without being inundated with these messages.

Remember, young men and women often interpret the statements adults make quite literally. Some students may even be suspicious of what adults tell them. In these circumstances, they are quick to notice inconsistencies in the messages we convey.