NJ teen wins national award for heroin education program

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, N.J. (AP) — The problem with student heroin education, Stephanie Reifman decided at age 13, was that no one was listening.

Five years later, Reifman's HAPPY Week heroin program for middle and high school students has earned her a $36,000 Helen Diller Foundation Teen Tikkun Olam ("repair the world") Award, one of only 15 granted nationwide.

Her program now reaches 40 New Jersey and New York public schools and their 15,000 students — on a zero-based budget.

"The biggest programs we had were someone from the county coming into the school to lecture," Reifman recalls. "The students were intimidated. Nothing existed about kids talking to kids.