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Drug Education

NCJ Number
104557
Author(s)
M S Goodstadt
Date Published
1988
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This guide accompanies a videotape by the same title and discusses the strategy of controlling drug abuse through education, the audience for drug education, the effectiveness of drug education, and the development of more effective education.
Abstract
Drug education refers to the repertoire of laws, policies, programs, and actions designed to reduce the use of drugs. The current trend in drug education is to include a variety of components designed to influence knowledge, feelings, skills, and behavior. The audiences of drug education should include both users and nonusers, juveniles and adults, and juvenile peers and parents. Drug education must focus on modifications in knowledge attitudes, and behavior, all of which impact the extent of drug use. Recent school-based drug education programs that have focused on the development of personal social skills promise a significant impact, but they have not yet proved themselves. Mass-media programs may reinforce more intensive interpersonal strategies. Community-based programs can reinforce more traditional school-based strategies, but there is little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these broader approaches. Drug education can be more effective through planning, taking into account the target audience's previous history, acknowledging the positive reinforcements for drug use, establishing links between the educational setting and the rest of the student's experience, implementing programs, allocating resources, and evaluating programs. See NCJ 104207 for videotape.