Drug Outreach, Promoting Awareness (DOPA) is an undergraduate outreach program for local high school students designed to convey the neurobiological basis, risks, and addictive potential of commonly abused drugs. Here we describe DOPA and evaluate the program, including its impact on high school student attitudes about drug harm risk and…

Aims: In most countries, cannabis use rates are highest among young people. Efforts invested in cannabis prevention programmes have had limited success. In part, this may be attributed to a dearth of meaningful discussion in classroom settings on the topic and scarcity of credible resources. Although young people want opportunities to engage in…

Purpose: Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs use typically increases in prevalence and frequency during middle and late adolescence. School health instruction often focusses on providing facts and rarely provides tools for addressing the psychosocial risk factors needed to prevent substance use. The purpose of this paper is to report about…

People who use illicit drugs often experience stigma that manifests in systemic discrimination, marginalisation and social exclusion. Drug education, which is underpinned by the information model, and often includes fear-based tactics. Eleven focus groups were conducted with sixty-six young people (14-16 years old) in ten schools in Northern…

Background: Considerable attention has been focused on the impact of young people's alcohol use. To address this, schools often implement alcohol and drug education and there are many potential programmes to choose from. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify evidence-based alcohol education programmes for schools. Methods: A systematic…

Drug-related death (DRD) is a major public health problem globally, with rates in Scotland higher than any other UK region and among the highest in Europe. One of the most important public health interventions to emerge aimed at tackling rising DRD rates is the distribution of naloxone, the opioid antagonist, for peer administration. The Scottish…

Background: REBOUND is a novel media-based life skills and risk education programme developed for 14- to 25-year olds in school, university or youth group settings. This paper outlines the programme's rationale, curriculum and implementation. It provides information of relevance to researchers, programme developers and policymakers. Methods/design…

This article takes a systematic approach to reviewing substance use prevention programs introduced in elementary school (K-6th grade). Previous studies evaluating such programs among elementary school students showed mixed effects on subsequent substance use and related psychosocial factors. Thirty published evaluation studies of 24 elementary…

Despite a 50-year interdisciplinary and longitudinal research legacy--showing that nearly 80% of young people considered most "at risk" thrive by midlife--only recently have practitioners/researchers engaged in the explicit, prospective facilitation of "resilience" in educational settings. Here, theory/knowledge distinguishing…

Few after-school programs target alcohol and other drug (AOD) use because it is difficult to encourage a diverse group of youth to voluntarily attend. The current study describes CHOICE, a voluntary after-school program which targeted AOD use among middle school students. Over 4,000 students across eight schools completed surveys and 15%…

The prevention of drug abuse is an especially salient topic for school psychologists and other educational professionals. Schools are the primary setting for providing education and information aimed at the prevention of drug abuse. Previous meta-analyses (Ennett, et al., 1994; West & O'Neal, 2004) indicate that one of the nation's most popular…

Using a randomized controlled effectiveness trial, we examined the effects of Project SUCCESS on a range of secondary outcomes, including the program's mediating variables. Project SUCCESS, which is based both on the Theory of Reasoned Action and on Cognitive Behavior Theory, is a school-based substance use prevention program that targets…

The National Drug Sector Information Service is committed to supporting those who work to prevent or reduce the harm to individuals, families, communities and the nation caused by alcohol and other drugs. This paper describes a project to assist particular members of the alcohol and other drugs sector to improve quality and the transfer of…

This paper tells the story of the multi-layered translational process of the Drug Resistance Strategies Project. The Drug Resistance Strategies Project provides an exemplar of translational scholarship, translating adolescent narratives about their substance use experiences into an efficacious, substance abuse prevention middle school curriculum.…

Parent drug education is considered a key aspect of drug prevention. Effective communication acts as protective factor for drug misuse in young people. This study is a Participatory Action Research study of "Drugsbridge", a drug education programme that has an emphasis on facilitating intergenerational communication about drugs between parents and…