Skip navigation

Project TNT (Toward No Tobacco Use)

Project Towards No Tobacco Use (TNT) is an evidence-based comprehensive prevention, classroom-based curriculum designed to prevent or reduce tobacco use in youth 10 to 15 years old in grades five through ten. Upon completion of this program, students will be able to describe the course of tobacco-addiction, the consequences of using tobacco, and the prevalence of tobacco use among peers. Delivered in 10 core and 2 booster lessons, TNT is proven effective at helping youth to:

  • Resist tobacco use and advocate no tobacco use
  • Demonstrate effective communication, refusal, and cognitive coping skills
  • Identify how the media and advertisers influence youth to use tobacco products
  • Identify methods for building their own self-esteem
  • Describe strategies for advocating no tobacco use

Project TNT is designed to counteract several different causes of tobacco use simultaneously because the behavior is determined by multiple causes. This comprehensive approach works well for a wide variety of youth who may have different risk factors influencing their tobacco use.

Recognition

  • Model Program: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • Programs That Work: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • Exemplary Program: U.S. Department of Education
  • Programs That Work (Discontinued): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Program Background

Project TNT was initially funded, from 1987 to 1993, with a grant from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The theory underlying Project TNT is that young people will best be able to resist using tobacco products if they 1) are aware of misleading social information that facilitates tobacco use (e.g., advertising, inflated prevalence estimates), 2) have skills that counteract the social pressures to achieve approval by using tobacco, and 3) appreciate the physical consequences that tobacco use may have on their own lives (e.g., the beginnings of addiction)

Intended Population

Project TNT was completed originally with seventh grade students. It has been successfully implemented with White, African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian-American adolescents, 10 to 15 years old.

Benefits

  • At the completion of this program, students will be able to:
  • Describe the course of tobacco addiction and disease
  • Demonstrate effective communication, refusal, and cognitive coping skills
  • Identify how the media and advertisers influence teens to use tobacco products
  • Identify methods for building their own self-esteem

How It Works

  • Implementing Project TNT involves the following activities:
  • A comprehensive, 10-day, classroom-based social influences program that examines media, celebrity, and peer portrayal of tobacco use
  • Training in active listening, effective communication, and general assertiveness development along with methods for building self-esteem
  • Education on the course of tobacco-related addiction and diseases; correction of inflated tobacco use prevalence estimates
  • Learning tobacco-specific cognitive coping skills and assertive refusal techniques
  • Practicing ways to counteract media portrayals of tobacco use, including social activism letter writing to make a public commitment to not using tobacco products
  • Use of homework assignments, a classroom competition (i.e., the "TNT Game"), and a two-lesson booster program
  • Longitudinal assessment material

Rate (Grades 5–8, 10 sessions): $500