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Keeping kids 'clean'
What works in the fight to prevent drug and alcohol use among young people
A group of teenagers from Savio Preparatory High School descends on Government Center Plaza in Boston wearing yellow T-shirts and brandishing bells, noisemakers, and giant alarm clocks. They've come to deliver a message to commuters heading for the subway in the evening rush hour. "Wake up, parents of Boston," they shout. "Wake up to the risks of marijuana."
The message, printed on pads of sticky notes they distribute, isn't new, but the method of delivering it is. This rally by Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) is just one example of how prevention programs across the US are trying new tactics or revamping established approaches in an effort to keep young people off drugs and alcohol.
"I think many people are trying to educate about the dangers [of substance abuse], but the message isn't always getting across," says Maria Cardullo, a biology teacher and adviser to the Savio Prep SADD chapter.
That's exactly what prevention experts are concerned about: They want to avoid the "generational forgetting" that can happen when society lets down its guard.
Drug use among young people has been a problem since the 1960s. It peaked in 1981, when 66 percent of American youths had tried illicit substances. The rate gradually fell to 41 percent before rising again.
Now, according to 2001 statistics, 54 percent of students have tried drugs by the time they finish high school. Eighty percent say that they have consumed alcohol, according to the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
Perhaps more alarming is the fact that children start experimenting with alcohol at younger and younger ages. By age 12, 20 percent of students have tried alcohol. That figure rises to 50 percent by the time they've reached eighth grade.
Drug use has also shifted geographically. In the past, substance abuse was primarily a problem in cities. Now, students in rural areas are much more likely to use drugs than their urban counterparts, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York.
Where we stand
While the field of prevention science has existed only 30 years or so, researchers believe that they have already learned some important lessons.
"We continue to understand more about the pathways into drug use and how important it is to intervene early, to interrupt the trajectory that leads into drug usage," says Wilson Compton, director of prevention research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Dr. Compton and other experts agree that more research is needed, but they have identified four prevention fundamentals:
1. Education must be ongoing and span a child's entire school career.
2. It should be interactive, age-specific, family-focused, and target the particular drugs that are available to students. Whatever drug issues a community may be struggling with, prevention experts stress the need to make the solution fit the clientele. The first step is learning how to communicate in ways that young people will respond to.
3. Besides classroom programs that provide teens with scientific information about drugs, programs should teach skills that increase self-confidence and show youngsters how to refuse drugs and alcohol.
