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Part II: Prevention and Education
Effective drug prevention programs are long term, comprehensive, and designed to prevent use of any category of illicit drugs. They include a wide array of components rather than a single strategy or curriculum. For example, a comprehensive, community-based prevention program includes components for individuals, families, schools, the media, health care providers, law enforcement officials, and other community agencies and organizations.
Prevention programs should be geared to specific audiences and should recognize the specific needs, resource levels, and infrastructure of each community. In the case of methamphetamine, demographic data collection is incomplete, but current information shows that methamphetamine users include more whites and females and on average are older than other drug users. The Task Force recognizes that methamphetamine is changing the population of drug users; as the demographics of users change, prevention and education efforts should be tailored accordingly.
The most effective school and community
prevention programs are comprehensive and involve a broad range of components, including teaching social competence and drug resistance skills, promoting positive peer influences and antidrug social norms, emphasizing skills-training teaching methods, and providing
multiple years of intervention.
In addition, research-based approaches for implementing drug prevention programs include targeting salient risk and protective factors in the specific community, using principles of prevention research, and using a proven
prevention program. Research has shown that methamphetamine users are generally exposed to elevated levels of risk factors. Programs targeting risk and protective factors seek to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors. Risk factors include, but are not limited to, the availability of drugs, low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization, family conflict and management problems, favorable parental attitudes toward and involvement in substance abuse, early and antisocial behavior, academic failure beginning in late elementary school, friends who engage in substance abuse, and early initiation in substance abuse. Protective factors include, but are not limited to, family and school bonds, healthy beliefs and expectations, and social and academic competence.
In order to target the average age of onset of drug use, a comprehensive, school-based prevention program should engage children from kindergarten through high school, or at least through the middle school or junior high school years. School-based programs should not only involve parents, but should also collaborate with community organizations and programs. Similarly, a comprehensive community prevention program is long term, involves
different segments of the community in development and implementation, and is accessible to various audiences. Ideally, community prevention programs should include cross-disciplinary training so that prevention and education, treatment, and law enforcement officials can share their knowledge and build stronger programs.
If the initiation of any drug use, including methamphetamine use, can be prevented by using a proven prevention program, how do practitioners, policymakers, and community members develop such a program? More methamphetamine research is needed, including research on the initiation to and progression of use. Although research exists on what works with respect to primary drug prevention programs, more information is needed about programs that include methamphetamine in the targeted drug categories. Identification of such programs and evaluation of the extent to which they have had a specific impact on methamphetamine use are also needed. Researchers also need more data on methamphetamine users, including demographics and ethnography, their motivations, and the risk factors that lead to use of methamphetamine and other drugs. In particular, specific data on methamphetamine use among adolescents are needed, such as their motivations, risk factors, and attitudes toward methamphetamine use.
Meeting methamphetamine research needs presents the opportunity to develop better systems for data collection. Researchers can use what has been and will be learned from this experience to continue to modify existing systems and incorporate new tools for gathering information.
Following are the guiding principles related to prevention and education.
Guiding Principles
Effective drug prevention requires the involvement of many segments of the community—e.g., educators, youths, parents, law enforcement officials, business leaders, members of the faith community, social services providers, and representatives of other community agencies and organizations.
Effective prevention programs are comprehensive—e.g., involving the individual, families, schools, the media, law enforcement officials, health care providers, other professionals who directly serve youths, and community agencies and organizations. The program components should be well integrated in theme and content so they reinforce one another.
Methamphetamine prevention and education efforts should follow established prevention principles and should be part of broader
prevention and education efforts that target all forms of drug use.
Basic drug use prevention principles derived from research can be applied by schools and communities to successfully prevent drug use. Prevention activities should target all forms of drug use, including the use of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and inhalants.
It is important to clearly identify target
populations, motivations, risk factors, and demographics to design prevention and education strategies that are tailored to address the specific needs of local communities,
recognizing the multigenerational characteristics associated with methamphetamine manufacturing.
Prevention programs should be age-specific, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive. Also, they need to be tailored to meet the needs of specific subpopulations at risk for drug use and designed to address the specific nature of the drug use problem in any given community, including workplace programs that incorporate awareness, testing, and treatment components. The higher the target population's level of risk, the more intensive the prevention effort must be and the earlier it must begin.
Prevention and education programs should be guided by research and evaluation findings.
More than 20 years of prevention research has helped identify factors that put young people at risk for or protect them from drug use. Researchers have studied the effectiveness of various prevention approaches by using rigorous research designs and testing and implementing effective drug use prevention interventions in "real-world" settings. By applying prior research, local school officials and community leaders can increase the probability that their prevention efforts will be successful.
Prevention and education programs should be evaluated to determine effectiveness.
Prevention programs should follow structured organizational plans that progress from needs assessment to the establishment of measurable objectives; periodic evaluation of progress toward meeting the objectives; and, finally, the use of evaluation results to refine, improve, and strengthen the programs.
Parents and other adults should participate in any prevention or education programs designed for youths.
Prevention programs that focus on youths should include a parents' or caregivers' component that reinforces what the youths are learning—such as what they perceive to be the personal consequences of drug use (one characteristic of methamphetamine seems to be the lack of perceived negative effects)—and that opens opportunities for family discussions about the use of legal and illegal substances and family policies about their use. Prevention programs can enhance protective factors among young children by teaching parents about better family communication, discipline, rulemaking, and other parenting skills. Research has shown that parents should take an active role in their children's lives: talking with them about drugs, monitoring their activities, knowing their friends, and understanding their problems and personal concerns.
Community methamphetamine efforts should target both youths and new adult users.
Community prevention programs should include both youths and adults in a comprehensive strategy that involves the whole community. Youths should be involved in designing programs.
Needs and Recommendations
Following are needs and recommendations related to prevention and education programs, based on the previous guiding principles:
- Address methamphetamine through broad-based drug prevention and education efforts that target all forms of drug use and that are based on research and established prevention principles.
- Develop science-based prevention program planning and intervention guidelines in communities where methamphetamine is already a problem.
- Involve the entire community in prevention efforts, including educators, youths, parents, vendors of the materials used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, law enforcement officials, business leaders, members of the faith community, social services providers, and representatives of other government agencies and organizations.
- Identify the changing population characteristics of users, their motivations, risk factors, and demographics.
- Involve parents and other adults in prevention and education programs for youths, particularly in the areas of monitoring for latchkey status children, enhancing parent-child communication skills, and providing consistent family/home rules for youths' behavior and leisure time activities.
- Ensure that media campaigns proceed with caution, focusing on raising awareness of methamphetamine using messages designed to minimize unintended effects, such as arousing curiosity about methamphetamine.
- Develop or augment programs aimed at educating those communities in which methamphetamine is an emerging or chronic problem.
Research Priorities
Following are the priorities for research initiatives to raise knowledge about prevention and education strategies:
- Examine existing methamphetamine prevention and education strategies that are included in broad prevention programs targeting all forms of drug use and determine the extent to which they have been effective.
- Support research on the initiation to methamphetamine use as well as the progression of use leading to addiction.
- Collect additional data on the extent of methamphetamine use, focusing on a number of areas (e.g., adolescent use, prevalence in rural and tribal areas) and continue to develop and build on existing databases, making them more sensitive to local communities.
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