This guide focuses on partnerships that schools and communities can create to plan, fund, and implement strategies to prevent the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. It provides the conceptual framework and the practical suggestions for achieving that objective.

Although schools have the primary responsibility for educating children and adolescents, schools alone cannot prevent the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Preventing youth from smoking, drinking, and using drugs must be a collaborative effort, jointly undertaken by the school, community, and youths themselves. This guide was developed to explain the partnerships that schools and communities can create to share the responsibilities of planning, funding, and implementing preventive strategies and programs. The first section presents a conceptual framework for planning by reviewing the extent of the substance abuse problem among youth, identifying misconceptions that lead to ineffective programs, defining drug use as a behavioral problem determined by many systems of influence, exploring the need for an integrated approach to prevention, identifying both risk and protective factors within students' influence groups, formulating a new definition of prevention, and introducing a comprehensive health approach to drug prevention. The next section develops a leadership role for schools, explaining how to build a partnership among schools, law enforcement, and the community; identifying the planning steps; recommending a comprehensive program for the school site; considering community- and school-based program strategies; and listing criteria for preventive programs and curricula. The final three sections of the guide look briefly at the intervention plan, school policy, and program support. Relevant sections of California legal codes, resources, and references are appended. (NB)

"This publication does not offer a pre-packaged programme of education for drug abuse prevention that can be picked up and implemented. It is rather an attempt to provide a conceptual basis upon which teachers, policy makers and school administrators can make decisions about school based drug prevention programmes in order to achieve greater success in education terms" -- p. 6.

As the nation's drug crisis has deepened, public and private agencies have invested huge sums of money in prevention efforts. Are the resulting programs effective? What do we need to know to make them more effective? This book provides a comprehensive overview on what we know about drug abuse prevention and its effectiveness, including: Results of a wide range of antidrug efforts. The role and effectiveness of mass media in preventing drug use. A profile of the drug problem, including a look at drug use by different population groups. A review of three major schools of prevention theory-risk factor reduction, developmental change, and social influence. An examination of promising prevention techniques from other areas of health and human services. This volume offers provocative findings on the connection between low self-esteem and drug use, the role of schools, the reality of changing drug use in the population, and more. Preventing Drug Abuse will be indispensable to anyone involved in the search for solutions, including policymakers, anti-drug program developers and administrators, and researchers.