About

National Families in Action is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization that was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1977. The organization obtained the nation�s first state laws banning the sale of drug paraphernalia. It led a national effort to help parents replicate Georgia�s laws in other states to prevent the marketing of drugs and drug use to children and helped them form parent groups to protect children�s health.

During the 1980s, Sue Rusche, the organization�s director, wrote a twice-weekly column on drug abuse that was syndicated by King Features to some 100 newspapers across the nation.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, National Families in Action published Drug Abuse Update, a quarterly publication that highlighted scientific research about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, their impact on the brain and body, and the work done by all segments of society to reduce drug use, abuse, addiction, and other high-risk behaviors.

With demonstration grants from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention in the 1990s, the organization worked with families in inner-city Atlanta public housing communities to help parents protect their children from the crack epidemic and to help parents and teachers conduct an after-school program, Club HERO, for sixth-grade students at a large, inner- city middle school.

National Families in Action co-founded the Addiction Studies Program for Journalists with Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 1999. This effort is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as is the Addiction Studies Program for the States which began in 2005. The Treatment Research Institute and the National Conference of State Legislatures became two additional partners for the states program.

Both programs seek to provide a basic understanding of the science that underlies drug abuse and addiction to help journalists write more scientifically accurate stories about drugs and to help lawmakers and executive branch administrators implement more effective drug policies in their states.

To further educate the public about the impact of addictive drugs on the brain and behavior, the program�s directors wrote False Messengers: How Addictive Drugs Change the Brain (Friedman and Rusche, Harwood Academic Books, 1999).

In 2003, with a $4.2 million grant from Congress, National Families in Action created the Parent Corps via a pilot program conducted in 19 schools in nine states. The program received a no-cost extension to operate for a fourth year through 2007. It currently continues in two Georgia schools with private funding. U.S. Representative John Lewis has introduced the National Parents Corps Act to make the Parent Corps a permanent institution in the effort to protect adolescents from high-risk behaviors that endanger their health, safety, and well-being.