Rocky Herron Changes the Way Drug Prevention Assemblies are Presented

Story courtesy of the San Diego Union-Tribune

Rocky Herron spent years taking down drug traffickers, seizing methamphetamine and illicit pills coming across the border and investigating doctors who wrote prescriptions in exchange for money.

Now he talks to schoolchildren.

At each campus he visits, Herron faces the same daunting challenge. Will he get the students to listen?

“Not everyone wants to hear a drug assembly, I get that,” he told an Encinitas group last fall. “But every assembly that I give, I know there are people who want to hear it. And that’s why I do this work.”

Every time, his audience listens.

Herron isn’t your typical school speaker. He spent 31 years as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He started talking to school groups in 2007 after being asked to speak in his daughter’s fifth-grade class. He expected questions about marijuana but was asked about heroin and methamphetamine. Other teachers heard about his talk and invited him to their classes, and it grew from there, becoming a part of his job.

Learn more in the full San Diego Union-Tribune article and explore the I Choose My Future videos and resources at sdcoe.net/IChoose.