Inhalant Abuse Prevention Awareness Institute

This conference, presented by the Virginia Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition, was held on March 12th in Staunton, VA. The Coalition consists of a group of concerned prevention professionals and educators who are dedicated to raising awareness of inhalant abuse by providing factual information and resources in an effort to decrease inhalant use across the state.


On the night of the 11th, an inhalant prevention summit was held and included all the leaders in the field. Wayne Frith, the facilitator for the evening, engaged the participants on how to utilize the most effective strategies to spread the message at both the community and the national level.

It went very well and a number of interesting topics were presented, such as:

The Tragedy of Inhalant Abuse - this the first topic, presented by Sgt. Jeff Williams. He spoke about losing his son to inhalant abuse and played several YouTube videos to highlight children's exposure to inhalants as being cool.

Inhalant Abuse Basics - Dr. Robert Balster of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University explained what are inhalants as well as why and how they are abused.

Communities in Action - representatives from three different communities shared their approaches to inhalant abuse.

Teaching Kids About Inhalants - the updated Inhalant Abuse Prevention Manual was used to explain the principles for teaching young people about inhalants.

ACE was glad to be a part of this conference and to have our Inhalant Prevention Kits handed out to all attendees.

We'll be working with the Coalition for the next two years as they reach towards their goal of decreasing inhalant abuse in Virginia by 2009.