The Drug Free Youth Incentives Program was introduced to the State Attorney's Office in 1991 by Shellie Martin, the parent of a Sandalwood High School student. The program was soon adopted as a positive effort to deter young people from engaging in the use of drugs.

The D-FY-INCE program was modeled after a project that originated in Tyler, Texas called D-FY-IT (Drug Free Youth in Texas). The philosophy of D-FY-INCE is to use positive community incentives, rewards and peer pressure to influence young people not to use drugs.

On March 12, 1991, the principal of Sandalwood High School held four assemblies to introduce the pilot program to the student body. Mr. Van Jake, a progessional football player, made a special appearance to speak with the students about drug use and encourage them to join the D-FY-INCE program. That week over 700 students took a drug test to join the program and by April 17th, 350 more students were tested. Imagine that, less than 45 days after the program was introduced, a total of 1050 students became members of D-FY-INCE. That figure represented over 50% of the student population at Sandalwood High School.

Because the program produced such tremendous results during its introduction, the Florida Informed Parents organization introduced the program to the Florida Coming Together Drug-Free Statewide Prevention Conference in Orlando on April 30th.

In the years since, we now have 15 local high schools that have implemented this innovative youth incentives program.