It's one thing for a teen to say no to drugs and alcohol. It's quite another to make it trendy.

But each time they slip into their chic black T-shirts, emblazoned with the slogan "SOBER. It's the new black," the kids in the JULES Group at Middleton High School are trying to make sobriety hip.

"We're trying to change the culture of cool," said president Ali Stone, 17, and a Middleton junior. "Our message is that it's cool to be sober. You will still have fun. You will still have friends."

Founded several years ago as a support group by friends of Julie Zdeblick, a Middleton High School junior who died in 2004 of an OxyContin overdose, the JULES Group has evolved into "more of an awareness group and social group," Stone said.

The students get together at least once a month for an outing like laser tag and a movie, "so we don't have to be put in a party situation where there's drugs and alcohol available," she said. "It's like a network of kids so they have each other, and they don't have to be in situations where they will be pressured to drink or do drugs."

One safe bet is this Saturday night: a rock concert sponsored by the JULES group in hopes of drawing close to 500 people. The 90-minute show features We The Living and a student hip-hop group, The Flow Flowbanditz and The Organics.

JULES, which receives no school funds, has raised about $500 this year from T-shirt sales, said Stone. The club has about 25 members, most of whom were recruited this year, "which is amazing," she said. "There's never been this many people in it before."

But advertising sobriety can be "very hard. Even at freshman orientation, some kids will walk away as soon as you say 'drug and alcohol awareness.' Some people won't even wrap their mind around that."

The group has partnered with the Chris Farley Foundation and is working on comedy improv material to take to middle schools, said Jennifer Veinberg, health assistant at Middleton High School and the JULES adviser. "The problem with alcohol and drugs with our teenagers is very serious," she said. "But the days of the '80s (and the slogans) 'This is your brain on drugs' and the scare tactics don't work with today's kids."

The T-shirts can be ordered at www.sconnie.com, or purchased in person at Underground Printing, 521 State Street, Madison.

If you go

What: Benefit concert for the JULES Group, featuring rock band We the Living, with student hip-hop group The Flowbanditz and The Organics

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Performing Arts Center, Middleton High School, 2100 Bristol St., Middleton

Tickets: $4 students, $7 adults