The Drug Resistance Strategies Project (DRS), a program funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), teaches adolescents and pre-adolescents how to make decisions and resist alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD). The DRS project was one of the first programs to examine how adolescents refused offers of substances. Adolescent narratives revealed for resistance strategies—Refuse, Explain, Avoid, and Leave that became known as the REAL strategies. These narratives became the basis for a multicultural school-based substance use prevention program, keepin’ it REAL (kiR). To reduce the likelihood that youth will engage in ATOD, the kiR lessons include personal stories and language that youth find familiar, along with teaching effective risk assessment, decision making, communication, and life skills including the REAL strategies. Middle and elementary schools are currently implementing kiR in the following states: Arizona, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. In 2006, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices selected kiR as a “Model Program” for its culturally grounded substance use prevention curriculum. History In the 1980s, Drs. Michelle Miller-Day and Michael Hecht’s research in interpersonal and interethnic communication at Arizona State University led them to use narrative and performance theories to study how people's personal stories promote reading, prevent date rape, and develop positive familial attitudes. They first obtained funding from NIDA and launched the Project (DRS1) in 1989. Initial research was conducted in two high schools in Arizona. With this work, Miller-Day and Hecht identified the four resistance strategies (Refuse, Avoid, Explain, and Leave) that are the core of the DRS Project. Since then the project expanded to include middle and elementary school students and to address ethnicity and gender. In 1997, Hecht moved to the Pennsylvania State University where he continued the Drug Resistance Strategies Project in collaboration with colleagues from Arizona. The project developed, implemented, and evaluated a middle school prevention curriculum. More specifically, Hecht and his colleagues created keepin’ it REAL and field tested the curriculum, which they later implemented in thirty five middle schools in Phoenix. KiR was successful in limiting use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana between 7th and 8th grades. Starting in 2003, they have been working under a new grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The current research concentrates on determining the best grade level to introduce the prevention program (5th vs. 7th grade), including elementary school implementation