It's a drug prevention conversation--and program--that was largely missing as recently as a decade ago in most middle and high schools. In those days, the principal concern of health educators and disciplinarians alike was to keep students from misusing alcohol and illegal street drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine and even heroine. But driven by the proliferation of high-powered prescription drugs, from the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin to the ADHD remedy Adderall--and sobered by prescription drug abuse statistics for school-age children--educational leaders are answering back with a host of new initiatives targeted to that very problem and aimed largely at middle schools, where such drug abuse often begins. Besides the risk of addiction and overdoses, the widespread and unauthorized use of these drugs is having other far-reaching effects. The 2009 National Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control showed a strong correlation between illicit prescription drug use and academic performance in high school. Of those students who had taken such drugs once or more, 26 percent earned mostly Cs, while 41 percent registered Ds and Fs. Last fall, the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) started distributing "Smart Moves, Smart Choices," a comprehensive "school toolkit" designed to prevent prescription drug abuse and featuring noted authority Drew Pinsky in a series of video segments. The National Education Association's (NEA) Health Information Network is creating an anti-prescription-drug-abuse curriculum that its framers promise will adhere to the National Health Education Standards and to the Common Core State Standards. The curriculum is scheduled for release at the NEA's national conference in July. Some school districts, meanwhile, have taken prescription drug education into their own hands--the result of growing abuse in their communities and fatalities in their schools.