Prepared by: Joan Antonio Riparip

 Drug and alcohol abuse are important

problems that affect school-age youth at
earlier ages than in the past.

Many educators recognize that drug and

alcohol abuse among students are significant
barriers to the achievement of educational
objectives.
Schools have become the major focus of
drug and alcohol abuse education and
prevention activities for youth.
Approaches to DRUG and ALCOHOL Abuse
Education

TRADITIONAL CONTEMPORARY
Traditional Approach
Information dissemination
simply providing students with factual information about
drugs and alcohol
to dramatize the dangers of drug abuse by using fear-arousal
techniques designed to attract attention and frighten
individuals into not using drugs, accompanied by vivid
portrayals of the severe adverse consequences of drug abuse.
Methods
 classroom lectures about the dangers of abuse,
as well as educational pamphlets and other
printed materials, and short films that impart
information to students about different types of
drugs and the negative consequences of use.
Effectiveness
 Ithas become increasingly clear that the
etiology of drug and alcohol abuse is complex,
and prevention strategies that rely primarily on
information dissemination are not effective in
changing behavior.
Contemporary Approach
Social resistance approach
Social influence programs focus extensively on
teaching students how to recognize and deal with
social influences to use drugs from peers and the
media.
These resistance-skills programs focus on skills
training to increase students' resistance to negative
social influences to engage in drug use, particularly
peer pressure.
Methods
The goal of resistance-skills training approaches is to have students
learn ways to avoid high-risk situations where they are likely to
experience peer pressure to smoke, drink, or use drugs, and/or acquire
the knowledge, confidence, and skills needed to handle peer pressure
in these and other situations.

Effectiveness
Resistance skills programs as a whole have generally been successful.
Competence Enhancement Approach
According to the competence-enhancement approach, drug
use behavior is learned through a process of modeling,
imitation, and reinforcement and is influenced by an
adolescent's pro-drug cognitions, attitudes, and beliefs.
These factors, in combination with poor personal and social
skills, are believed to increase an adolescent's susceptibility
to social influences in favor of drug use.
Methods

emphasis on the teaching of generic personal self-

management skills and social coping skills.

Ex. decision-making and problem-solving skills, cognitive skills for

resisting interpersonal and media influences, skills for enhancing self-
esteem, adaptive coping strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety,
general social skills and general assertiveness skills.
Effectiveness
Drug abuse prevention programs that emphasize
resistance skills and general life skills (i.e.,
competence-enhancement approaches) appear to show
the most promise of all school-based prevention
approaches.
 Challenges for School-Based Drug Abuse
Prevention
An important area that deserves further attention is how
effective school-based drug abuse prevention programs can
be widely disseminated, adopted, and institutionalized.
Furthermore, once effective programs are disseminated, steps
must be taken to ensure that programs are implemented with
sufficient fidelity.
REFERENCES

BOTVIN, GILBERT J. 2000. "Preventing Drug Abuse in Schools: Social and

Competence Enhancement Approaches Targeting Individual-Level Etiological
Factors." Addictive Behaviors 25:887–897.

<a href="http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1923/Drug-Alcohol-
Abuse.html">Drug and Alcohol Abuse - SCHOOL, COLLEGE
HAPPY to END
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