Essential advocate on substance use

When marijuana became legal in Conneticut in July 2021, I was concerned about how this new law might affect our youth and their perceptions about the safety of marijuana. While e-cigarette use continues to be a serious public health concern, marijuana use — including marijuana vaping — is also rising among Connecticut youth.

As a researcher in this field, my work has focused on the development and evaluation of game-based interventions to promote healthy behaviors in youth. Most recently, my team and I developed an intervention focused on e-cigarette prevention that targeted middle school students in Connecticut. In early 2020, we completed a large study with 285 students in Milford that played our game intervention in schools. The intervention was successful and made an important impact on students’ understanding of the harm associated with ecigarette use.

The same week that the bill passed, I reached out to Sen. James Maroney about my concerns regarding the need for providing Connecticut youth with greater prevention efforts to not only reduce the uptake of ecigarette use, but also the imperative need to include marijuana use and marijuana vaping in the curricula. Sen. Maroney reached out to me immediately to set up a call to meet with me and learn more about the work we were doing in Connecticut schools.

Sen. Maroney made substantial efforts to assist our team in finding support to help us bring our program into schools. He was quick to provide updates, respond to emails and keep us in the loop as he searched for ways to help us. We had many calls and conversations via email over the past year. This fall, because of Sen. Maroney’s determination and efforts, our team will begin working with Connecticut middle schools to implement our intervention focused on e-cigarette and marijuana prevention.

Sen. Maroney has been an important advocate for us this past year. More so, he has been — and continues to be — an essential advocate for protecting our Connecticut youth from poor health outcomes associated with substance use.

Kimberly Hieftje Assistant Professor, Yale Pediatrics Guilford