OKINAWA — If children get the message at an early age, it’s easier to hammer home how drugs are harmful.

That was the message Monday as bases across the Pacific kicked off Red Ribbon week.

"At the elementary school level … it’s important we lay the foundation of how to make the right choices with drugs, and that is to say, ‘No,’ " said Veronica Finney, a fourth-grade teacher at Bechtel Elementary School on Camp McTureous. "It’s easier for us than middle school and high school because at that level, they have more peer pressure,"

Red Ribbon Week, recognized nationally in 1988, was started in honor of Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who was murdered in 1985 after more than four years of undercover work in Mexico.

Many Department of Defense Dependent Schools in the Pacific are re-enforcing the anti-drug message through themes such as crazy socks day, with the slogan "Feet are stinky and so are drugs," she said.

The goal is to involve kids, parents and the community, said Mike McClain, principal of Kadena Middle School. McClain said it was important to reach "the people on the margin."

"We’re trying to catch kids that might be in the liability zone and move them to the safe zone," he said.

By middle school, students learn "a lot more specific" information about the damage drugs do to the body, he said.

The message seems to be hitting home.

This week "is a really good time for young adults like us to be taught … that doing drugs is just wrong," said Austin Patrick, 12, a Kadena Middle School seventh-grader.

If offered drugs, Patrick says, "No. No way."