The Origins of Red Ribbon Week
Enrique Camarena
1943-1985
It was February 7, 1985 at 2:00 p.m. a warm winter afternoon in Guadalajara, Mexico, when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique (Kiki) Camarena locked his badge and revolver in his desk drawer and left to meet his wife for lunch. Kiki unsuspectingly crossed the street to his pickup truck. While unlocking the doors to his vehicle, he was grabbed by five men who shoved him into a beige Volkswagen. One month later, his body was discovered in a shallow grave. Kiki and his informant, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, were savagely and grotesquely murdered.
Kiki joined the DEA in 1974 and asked to be transferred to Guadalajara, Mexico, the center of the drug trafficking empire. While investigating a multi-billion dollar drug scam, he confiscated thousands of pounds of cocaine, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana. He suspected the drug scam involved officers in the Mexican army, police and government. Kiki was a believer that one person can make a difference and he sacrificed his life to prevent drugs from entering the United States.
In 1985, the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth joined with DEA and implemented a Red Ribbon campaign that spread to places as far away as Europe. The National Red Ribbon Week is celebrated every year October 23-31, and is dedicated to Kiki Camarena and all of the people who have been wrongly killed due to the violence of drugs.
Since then, millions of Americans have gotten involved in, and been touched by the Red Ribbon Campaign efforts. No other single drug prevention movement has had such an impact on so many lives. Each year, during the last week in October, more than 80 million young people and adults show their commitment to a healthy, drug-free life by wearing or displaying the Red Ribbon. This year's theme for Red Ribbon Week is "Ask Me, See Me, Be Me... I’m Drug Free."