An experimental group received a curriculum that teaches personal, social, decisionmaking, assertiveness, and environmental skills. An interactive, live assembly conducted by a robot introduced teachers and students to the Million Dollar Machine (MDM) curriculum at each school. The robot presented youth with information on the detrimental effects of substance use, emphasizing that the human body is like a "million dollar machine." Using concrete and familiar examples, the robot introduced a series of skills for coping with personal and academic problems. In addition to school assemblies, special training sessions were conducted to familiarize parents and community members with the MDM curriculum. The curriculum was emphasized for 8 weeks in the classroom. Students in the experimental group and those in a control group were pretested and then posttested twice, immediately after the intervention and 6 months later. Results of repeated measures-analysis provided evidence of the efficacy of this type of prevention strategy with suburban youth. Subjects who received intervention showed less actual and potential substance use than students in the control group over time. Intervention-group subjects also reported greater self-respect, responsibility, and environmental awareness. 2 tables and 33 references