Kenzie Nichols, 12, wishes she could show her bookmark, decorated in art saying “no” to smoking, to her grandmother, but sadly she added it is too late as her grandmother has already passed away from cancer, derived from smoking.

But, Kenzie said she hopes others in her family will pay attention to her artistic statement before they too become ill from the effects of smoking.

Kenzie was one of nine North Whidbey Middle School students who won awards for the creative bookmarks they made as part of a school contest. The contest was just one of the activities scheduled to spread substance abuse awareness, for Red Ribbon Week.

Red Ribbon Week started in 1986 as a memorial for U.S. Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique Camarena, who was killed by members of a drug cartel when he was on a drug case in Mexico.

Usually the last full week in October, Red Ribbon Week is now a time set aside to educate people on the cons of substance abuse and addictions and the pros of a drug free life. It is a time to encourage those trying to change and discourage those thinking of trying drugs. And it is also a time of support and of remembering loved ones lost to addictions.

Students created their bookmarks as an art project in Jon Aesoph’s art class. Sixth, 7th and 8th graders all made bookmarks for the contest, and out of each grade, three students won.

“On the anti-drug portion,” Aesoph said, “at this age, you can actually talk to kids about it, and they’ll listen.”

He said for this project, he saw some students create original pieces in the style of Japanese anime, street graffiti and other stylistically street fashioned writing.

Nicole Rezzetti, 10, said she worked three days on her bookmark. She wanted her bookmark to express how drugs erase a person’s identity and her focus was trying to tell her peers this through her art. For this, she used a face of a girl and marked her out until she became only a silhouette.

“I wanted to tell them, if you do drugs, bad things will happen to you. You won’t be able to understand clearly and once you start, you won’t be able to stop,” she said.

Organized by members of the North Whidbey Middle School’s Parent Teacher Association and judged by Roosevelt Rumble, of Oak Harbor’s Boy’s and Girl’s Club, the contest had over a hundred participants.

Kim Welch, member of the PTA, said the contest had good recognition from Impaired Driving Impact Panel of Island County (IDIPIC), local emergency response teams and the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. She said throughout Red Ribbon Week, the school had presentations, speakers, several contests and projects, and a display of information on substance abuse, addictions and side effects, such as problems substance abuse causes in home life and dealing with other people’s addictions, and incentives for living a drug free life, such as a model of a smoker’s lung.

Welch said the week’s events had a good response and she hopes it reached the kids, got the message across and causes some of them to act on what they learned during Red Ribbon Week.