NUTLEY -- Citing the state's heroin epidemic, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday said he plans to enact a law that would expand drug abuse prevention and education starting with kindergartners.

"We have people all across the state who are dying because they're using drugs," the governor told a classroom of sixth graders participating in a Law Enforcement Against Drugs (L.E.A.D.) program at the Washington Elementary School in Nutley.

"The people who are going to stop it, are you."

New Jersey deaths from heroin overdose crested 1,600 in 2016, or two and a half times the national average.

In response, Christie has declared addiction a public health crisis, and made expanding treatment the centerpiece of his final year in office. 

On Tuesday, he announced he'd awarded a $375,000 grant to L.E.A.D. to expand the program into the nine New Jersey counties with the highest prevalence of drug abuse.

Christie dedicates year to fighting addiction

L.E.A.D's Too Good for Drugs school-based prevention program is based on the long-standing Drug Awareness and Resistance education (D.A.R.E.) curriculum designed to prevent tobacco, alcohol and marijuana use among middle school children.

However, when the national D.A.R.E. organization embraced a new curriculum in 2012, the New Jersey's D.A.R.E. chapter broke away, arguing the old curriculum was superior in combating drug abuse among middle school kids because it started talking about drugs at the 5th grade level.

A court battle ensued, and in 2015, a judge ruled D.A.R.E. NJ could continue to use the old curricula, but not the D.A.R.E. name.

On Tuesday, Christie told a sixth grader at Washington Elementary who asked if the program would expand that he planned to take action this week.

The governor said that if the Legislature passed a bill expanding "all of the drug education programs down to kindergarten" on Thursday, he expected to sign it soon after.

It's unclear which lawmakers will be sponsoring that legislation.

Nicholas R. DeMauro, who leads of the newly-formed L.E.A.drug education group, said he had scheduled a meeting with Christie's aides about introducing a bill later this week that would expand L.E.A.D.'s in-school drug education state-wide, starting in kindergarten.

Last month, Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), introduced a separate bill seeking to expand the use of an evidence-based drug screening and referral program currently in use at some healthcare clinics to all public and private high schools in New Jersey. 

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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