Drug Education Effectiveness

Andrew BrownCoordinator Drug Education Forum

Definitions

• Drug education– Drug education is planned learning opportunities

which provide information and skills relevant to living in a world where drugs are common place.

• Drug– A drug is a substance which people take to change

the way they feel, think or behave.

Where does it fit in to the wider strategy?

Who Delivers Drug Education?

• Parents, carers and other family members• Schools– Science curriculum, PSHE Framework

• Peers• Youth and other children’s services• Public health campaigns• Charities, community and voluntary groups• Media

What do young people want?• their views and opinions listened to• to engage in discussion and debate• their drug education to be interesting, involving drama,

true-to-life stories and external contributors drug education to be taught by people who know what they are talking about

• as much information as possible; they do not want to be told just to ‘say no’

• to know the range of effects and risks of drugs and why people use them

• how to cope with an emergency • drug education to be given greater emphasis in primary

schools

Programmes to learn from?

• European Drug Addiction Prevention trial (EUDAP)

• The School Health and Alcohol Harm Reduction Project (SHAHRP)

EUDAP

• http://www.eudap.net/ • School based drug prevention programme, with

effectiveness being measured as the ability of the program to reduce the prevalence of drug use.

• Programme of of 12 one hour lessons delivered weekly by teachers who had attended a 3 day training course.

• Randomised controlled trial - over 7,000 pupils across 143 schools in seven different EU countries.

• Interventions groups smoked 12% less during past 30 days, 14% less in a regular way and 30% less daily, when compared with controls. The frequency of drunkenness in past 30 days was also reduced by 28% and 31% for at least once and regularly respectively, and the consumption of cannabis was reduced by 23 and 24%, ALO and regularly respectively, The use of other drugs, although rare, was reduced by 11%.

SHAHRP

• http://www.ndri.curtin.edu.au/shahrp/index.html • Longitudinal intervention research study that uses

evidence-based, classroom alcohol education lessons to reduce alcohol-related harm in young people.

• Harm minimisation study combining thirteen classroom lessons, over a two year period.

• Enhance students ability to identify and use strategies that will reduce the potential for harm in drinking situations and that will assist in reducing the impact of harm once it has occurred. Student outcomes were assessed at eight, 20 and 32 month after baseline.

• significant knowledge, attitude and behavioural effects early in the study, some of which were maintained for the duration of the study.

• Over the period of the study (from baseline to final follow-up 32 months later), students who participated in the SHAHRP program had a 10% greater alcohol related knowledge, consumed 20% less alcohol, were 19.5% less likely to drink to harmful or hazardous levels, experienced 33% less harm associated with their own use of alcohol and 10% less harm associated with other peoples use of alcohol than did the control group.

Caveat

• Drug education is not an inoculation against substance misuse.

• Some drug education and information programmes do more harm than good.

• Policy and practice is far from uniform in the UK.