Alcohol Drug Prevention Education has been proven to work.
Alcohol and drug prevention education is essential if we are ever going to curb the increasing addiction problems in the United States and Europe, and must be provided for our children, youth and adults.
Types of Alcohol Drug Prevention and Education has been proven to be effective:
In the past 25 years there has been millions of dollars spent, with good intentions, to demonstrate what types of alcohol drug prevention education programs show promise. It is established that a program must identify the risk factors and the protective factors and then find effective ways to decrease the risk factors and support the protective factors.
Risk factors raise the chance of someone being adversely effected by alcohol and other drugs. Protective factors are obviously those activities and supports that reduce the risk factors and support individuals and communities to resist abuse and addiction.
It should be noted that a risk factor for one person may not be for the next. To have an effective alcohol drug prevention education program, one has to know the target population and what factors are causing them to turn to chemical abuse rather than confronting the problems without escape.
US government demonstration programs, such as the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Community Partnerships have found that there are several ways that risk factors influence the abuse of alcohol and other drugs. These demonstrations grants were awarded throughout the US during President Reagan’s second term. The author of this site was a Principal Investigator and Evaluator of two of these projects and much of the data discovered by all of these projects held true on ours as well.
Risk factors at one stage of a person’s development may be more powerful than at other times. This is the reason that alcohol and drug education is so important, because as a person learns attitudes and actions that are pro-survival, they learn to resist those actions that have negative consequences. Peer pressure, of course, is a major factors, both positively and negatively, in causing or preventing youth from eating to the risk factors that are part of their lives. We also know that a strong parent-child relationship has a greater value on reducing risks during one’s earlier years than it does later in adolescence.
When finding effective alcohol drug prevention education programs it is important to see if the program changes the balance between risk and protective factor, leading to the protective factors “preventing” the problem that you are wanting to prevent.