Teens can face a variety of peer pressure everyday ranging from drugs, alcohol and sex. Tombstone High School is trying to help their teens overcome these pressures by providing a teen maze to educate them to make better decisions.

“The teen maze is an opportunity for freshman through seniors to make decisions in everyday pressures,” said Patty Hoffman, a school counselor.  

According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, in 2000, 4.8 percent of girls between 15 and 17-years-old became pregnant in Cochise County.

In 2007, 444 cases of alcohol abuse were reported in Cochise County by the Arizona Department of Health Services by teens between 15 and 19-years-old.

The maze, which will be held on Feb. 12, is being paid for by a grant from the Cochise County Health Department, Hoffman said. It will be an all day event at the school and parental permission is required to attend. Those who do not attain permission will be in study hall for the day.

“I think the program is great,” said Karl Uterhardt, the Tombstone Unified School District superintendent. “It’s a real innovative way to show students their choices with an affect and show how their lives will be effected in the future.”

The maze will offer four sections. The students will be divided up into three groups, rotating to different sections throughout the day.  

Hoffman said one group will attend the maze, another will watch a movie on reckless driving and the third group will attend a presentation about sexually transmitted diseases.

At the end of the day, all the students will go to the gym and listen to a personal testament of a 15-year-old boy’s downward spiral because of drug addiction.

“You hear about these types of situations all the time but you don’t think about them until you actually have to face them,” said Alyssa Bristow, a sophomore at Tombstone High School.

Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and additional student volunteers are helping put on the maze. They have been meeting every Wednesday to help put the logistics together, Hoffman said.  

According to the Cochise County Health Department, 90 percent of the scenarios students will face in the maze are real life situations that have occurred in the county. The scenarios come from the health department and students who helped write some of the situations.

The health department and school are keeping the scenarios a secret to make sure that students have no time to prepare for the situations.  

“They are unable to read the scenario until they have received a piece of paper on the day of the maze,” said Hoffman.

The Cochise County Health Department has developed 19 different scenarios the students will face. Different stations address issues with first dates, tobacco and substance abuse and self-image.  Additionally, there will be a mortuary and a DUI prison.

To make sure the students understand the full effect of decisions, some parents may be called to get their reaction about the choices their child made in the maze.

According to Hoffman, in past years some students were happy that their choices in the maze that led to them being “pregnant.” They were then asked how their parents would feel. Most students said they thought their parents would be happy as well. Volunteers then called the parents to see what their reaction would be. Most were upset and in shock.

According to Hoffman, if a student does not take the maze seriously one of the consequences is death. The student is sent to the mortuary where they can fill out a headstone, lay in a casket and have nice things said about them.

“The kids need to make sure they are getting the information they need out of the teen maze,” Hoffman said.

Other choices students make in the maze can take lead the to graduation or jail as well.

“The maze is a great opportunity for the kids to see what kind of consequences they could get themselves into,” said Hoffman.