One of the most well thought out and researched programs that I heard was from Jeff Jordan, who started Rescue Social Change Group when he was 17. He said that you can either affect policy change, or cultural change. Policy change can be done by the “clean cut, preppy, ambitious” young people that are good at talking to adults, interested in volunteering for us, and want to make a difference for other young people. But these kids are not at risk.

The at risk kids are “cool kids, highly interested in what their peers think, and very involved with youth culture.” He said these kids will have nothing to do with a policy change campaign. He has designed many cultural change campaigns that are on his website, mainly where they bring “cool” people into bars to talk about anti-tobacco messaging. He said the two campaigns have to look and smell and feel totally different. He said you can either do one kind of campaign or the other kind and if you want to do both you have to do two separate campaigns. He said it’s like people who eat healthy food and people who eat fatty food. If you prepare a salad and then put a bunch of pork rinds on it, no one is going to eat it. You can’t meet in the middle with your campaign because then no one will listen.