Prevention of Substance Abuse

Substance Abuse Prevention Programs in the United States

The menace of drug abuse among the most active population in the U.S. has been an issue that successive governments have struggled to contain, some to a significant success rate and yet there still remains to be substantial work to be done in the same line to ensure the dream of having a drugs free U.S. is achieved. This has made several organizations, agencies and institutions to focus more on the prevention programs as will be discussed in the section below.

Substance Abuse Prevention Program at University of Missouri- Rolla (SAPP at UMR) is one such program that has had a significant preventive effect on the population that has done through the university since 1988 when it was first initiated and even on the general public through the collaboration they have with other like minded programs like Boost Alcohol Consciousness Concerning the Health of University Students (BACCHUS). The SAPP-UMR is also known for the formation of the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs), offering them counselling and guidance as well as establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) all with the aim of both preventing drug abuse and guiding the addicts towards rehabilitation. SAPP-UMR has successfully initiated programs like the Forum on Responsible Party planning and risk management where they brought together a large student organization with the police chiefs, faculty, student health service physician, and agents from state division on liquor to discuss and enlighten students on legal and medical aspects of alcohol use.

The program, seen as effective among the students, is predominantly funded by the administrative offices and enabled to carry out their activities without challenges. The group is marketed through various presentations made before campus groups, through a brochure advertising their services, through on-campus and off-campus media, through word of mouth by students, the faculty and the staff. The success of the program can be seen from the constant demand from groups like the Greek students group and the publications they get from newsletters and acceptance of their information on pamphlets by the students, faculty and the staff in general. There has been unanimous positive feedback that the program has also received from the beneficiaries (Burns C.F. And Consolvo C.A., 1992).

Yet another successful preventive program is the Juvenile and Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Program (JASAP) which is defined as a curriculum-based prevention and health promotion program based in Fulton County-Georgia for youth between the ages of 13 to 18 years. The program kicked off in 2007 with the aim oaf promoting healthy decision making skills and knowledge which was seen as a significant step towards making positive choices and constructive decisions on matters of drug and alcohol use.

The program was inspired by the worrying trends of the increasing drug use between 1991 and 1999 where the marijuana and cocaine use consistently increased in use by teenagers between 12 and 17 years at the rate of 2.5% annually. Being a curriculum-based prevention and health promotion program, the participants are often identified trough social institutions like the schools, juvenile courts, churches, the community as well as other youth organizations. The youth are then taken through model that encourages and equips them with skills to make intentional change. It involves the emotions, the behaviors as well as the cognitions of the teenagers. The program then measures the extent of the success based on the change in cognitive ability and behavior of the participants towards drug use, the more they are able to make their own decisions not to engage in drugs, and to influence others to keep off drugs, the higher the success rate of the program. It is worth noting here that in the curriculum-based program, the independent variable was the JASAP program and the dependent variables were the effect of the education program on the teenagers who underwent the successfully program (Talpade Medha et.al, n.d).