How Schools Can Prevent Drug Abuse
By Suzanne Kane
Early use of drugs predicts numerous problems for children later in life, not the least of which is a potential for life-long drug dependence and addiction. Addiction is often called a developmental disease by experts, in that it typically begins during the teen years, a critical time when brains are still developing.
A person’s brain is not fully developed until he or she is in their 20s. Environmental factors, social anxiety, and the ample opportunity for children and teens to use drugs all occur at the wrong time—when their brains are in the middle of great changes.
Research shows that early smoking makes children more likely to become dependent on nicotine—and may make them more likely than non-smoking children to become addicted to other drugs.
Drugs used in schools include alcohol, nicotine, and marijuana, but also methamphetamines, steroids, prescription drugs, and inhalants. Recent data show that one in 10 high school seniors used the prescription drug Vicodin for non-medical purposes during the past year. Teens often abuse prescription drugs to stay awake longer, to lose weight, or to pump up their body for athletic prowess.
Schools play an important role in helping shape students’ futures, and this extends beyond academics and athletics. In fact, without preventive programs in place throughout the school cycle (pre-school through high school), there’s nothing to stop drugs from gaining a foothold in particular at-risk children. Even children who are not predisposed to doing drugs may be lured into participation without the perception that drugs are harmful.
What can schools do to prevent drug abuse? According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), there are numerous things schools can do. The key is to act.
Risk Factors Schools Should Look Out For
Early-onset risk factors can place children on the path toward adolescent drug use and other problems. Teachers and school officials should be on the lookout for environmental, peer, and individual factors including inappropriate behavior in the classroom (aggressiveness, lack of impulse control), failure in academics, inadequate social coping skills, and association with high-risk peers, especially those abusing drugs.
Misconceptions Lead to Poor Policies
The perceptions that school staff have about drug use among students are often out of sync with reality. Many teachers and staff believe that most students use drugs. The truth is that most do not. The result, however, is that any existing drug-abuse policies, or those being developed, can be ambiguous or poorly enforced.
Steps for Schools to Take
NIDA identifies the following three crucial steps that schools can take to help prevent drug abuse among children:
• Use Science-Based Prevention Approaches—Schools need to adopt proven, science-based approaches to prevention. These need to be developmentally appropriate and reinforced at regular intervals, such as booster sessions held for the entire school body.
• Implement Early Intervention—Research shows that early intervention, especially with children at high risk for aggression, can change their negative developmental path and reduce subsequent problem behavior.
• Create the Right School Environment—Educators need to create the appropriate school environment. Such an environment emphasizes pro-social activity and responsibility. It further involves students, teachers, and administrators, and provides family support.
How Science-Based Prevention Programs Work
The goal of these programs is to eliminate or reduce drug abuse risk factors and to help boost protective factors. The science-validated programs can be adapted for individual or group settings, such as schools. NIDA highlights three types of science-based programs for prevention of drug abuse:
• Universal Programs—Address risk and protective factors that are common to all children in a particular setting, such as a school
• Selective Programs—For teens and target groups of children with factors that further increase their risk of drug abuse
• Indicated Programs—For children and teens who already abuse drugs
Specific Recommendations on School Drug-Abuse Prevention Programs
As early as preschool, school intervention with prevention programs can address difficulties with academics, social skills, and aggressiveness.
Elementary school preventive programs should target improving academic and social-emotional learning to address drug-abuse risk factors such as academic failure, early aggression, and school dropout. The program should focus on the following skills: academic support (especially reading), self-control, communication, and emotional awareness.
In middle school and junior high, prevention programs should step up students’ academic and social skills with academic support and study habits, reinforcement of anti-drug attitudes, drug resistance skills, strengthening personal commitments against drug abuse, communication, peer relationships, assertiveness, and self-efficacy.
Teachers should be trained on good classroom management practices, including rewarding appropriate student behavior. This helps foster school bonding, academic motivation and performance, and behavior in students.
Furthermore, research shows that community prevention programs that combine two or more programs such as family-based and school-based prevention programs have a better chance at success than a single prevention program.
Can Prevention Programs Help Stop Drug Use Among Teens?
With properly implemented combined and sustained prevention programs (utilizing family- and school-based, scientifically proven prevention methods), youths’ perceptions about the risks of drug use change. When drugs are perceived as harmful, drug use goes down. Citing a statistic that illicit drug use by teens decreased 24 percent from 2001 to 2007, NIDA emphasizes that prevention plays a critical role in the decline of drug use.
