Project STAR, formerly Midwestern Prevention Project

The Midwestern Prevention Project (MPP) was a comprehensive, community-based, multifaceted program intended to prevent or reduce gateway substance use (alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana) during adolescence. The program strived to help youths recognize the tremendous social pressures to use drugs and to provide them with assertiveness skills to help refuse peer pressure and avoid drug use. MPP was designed to eliminate gateway substance use in middle school students, to reduce the risk of delinquency along the lifespan.
The program was targeted at youths in the transitory period from early adolescence to middle adolescence, as this age presents a high risk for gateway drug use. The program was intended for use in a school-based setting for middle school students, specifically, sixth and seventh graders.
MPP disseminated an antidrug message to students through a system of well-coordinated, communitywide strategies that involved various areas that influence a middle school student’s life, including school, community, family, and mass media.