Drugs and resistance skills

1. Drugs and resistance skills By: Carissa Hosea and Amy Gilvin

2. Preventing Principles • Principle 2: Prevention programs should address all forms of drug abuse, alone or in combination, including the underage use of legal drugs (e.g., tobacco or alcohol); the use of illegal drugs (e.g., marijuana or heroin); and the inappropriate use of legally obtained substances (e.g., inhalants), prescription medications, or over-the-counter drugs • Principle 3: Prevention programs should address the type of drug abuse problem in the local community, target modifiable risk factors, and strengthen identified protective factors. • Principle 4: Prevention programs for elementary school children should target improving academic and social-emotional learning to address risk factors for drug abuse, such as early aggression, academic failure, and school dropout. Education should focus on the following skills: • • self-control; • • emotional awareness; • • communication; • • social problem-solving; and • • academic support, especially in reading. From: Preventing Drug Use among Children and Adolescents: A Research-Based Guide for Parents, Educators, and Community Leaders, Second Edition

3. D.A.R.E. Program • The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program is used in nearly 80% of the school districts in the United States, in 54 other countries around the world, and is taught to 36,000,000 students each year. • Scientific evaluation studies have consistently shown that DARE is ineffective in reducing the use of alcohol and drugs and is sometimes even counterproductive. • The estimated cost of DARE annually is already $1 to 1.3 billion. • The U.S. Department of Education prohibits schools from spending its funding on DARE. The funding comes from other departments and tax payers dollars • DARE has made about a dozen revisions to its program. Each time another study reports that the program is ineffective, DARE responds by saying that the results apply to "the old program." Each revision has proven to be just as ineffective as the one it follows, but it's a very effective tactic to distract and confuse the public. • Preliminary evaluations have found the rates of alcohol and drug use among students participating in the "new" DARE program to be the same as those among students using the old, failed DARE.

4. Alternative Prevention Programs • Life Skills Training Program (LST) -LST is a school-based substance abuse prevention program for students 10-14 years of age. It teaches general personal and social skills, specific resistance skills, and normative information. • Project ALERT - Project ALERT is also a school-based program, in this case for students in middle school. It teaches drug abstention norms, reasons to abstain, and resistance skills. • Strengthening Families Program (SFP) - SFP is a substance abuse prevention program for substance-abusing families with children six to12 years of age.

5. Alcohol • Alcohol is one of the most widely used drug substances in the world. Alcohol use and binge drinking among our nation’s youth is a major public health problem: • Alcohol is used by more young people in the United States than tobacco or illicit drugs. • Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with approximately 75,000 deaths per year. • Alcohol is a factor in approximately 41% of all deaths from motor vehicle crashes. • Among youth, the use of alcohol and other drugs has been linked to unintentional injuries, physical fights, academic and occupational problems, and illegal behavior. • Long-term alcohol misuse is associated with liver disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological damage as well as psychiatric problems such as depression, anxiety, and antisocial personality disorder. • Drug use contributes directly and indirectly to the HIV epidemic, and alcohol and drug use contribute markedly to infant morbidity and mortality. • As of 1988, all states prohibit the purchase of alcohol by youth under the age of 21 years. Underage drinking is defined as consuming alcohol prior to the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years. Current alcohol use among high school students remained steady from 1991 to 1999 and then decreased from 50% in 1999 to 42% in 2009. In 2009, 24% of high school students reported episodic heavy or binge drinking. • Zero tolerance laws in all states make it illegal for youth under age 21 years to drive with any measurable amount of alcohol in their system (i.e., with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) ≥0.02). In 2009, 10% of high school students reported driving a car or other vehicle during the past 30 days when they had been drinking alcohol. In addition, 28% of students reported riding in a car or other vehicle during the past 30 days driven by someone who had been drinking alcohol.

6. Tobacco • Tobacco use, including cigarette smoking, cigar smoking, and smokeless tobacco use, remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. • Each year cigarette smoking accounts for approximately 1 of every 5 deaths, or about 443,000 people. • Cigarette smoking results in 5.1 million years of potential life lost in the United States annually. • Each day in the United States, approximately 3,600 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 years initiate cigarette smoking, and an estimated 1,100 young people become daily cigarette smokers. • In 2009, 19% of high schools students reported current cigarette use and 14% reported current cigar use. In addition, 9% of high school students and 20% of white male high school students reported current smokeless tobacco use.

7. References • http://drugabuse.gov/prevention/index.html • http://alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html • http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/healthtopics/index.htm