Prevention of drug use

NODC assists Member States in developing prevention activities that provide people, particularly the young, with the information, the skills and the opportunities to make healthy choices, including the choice to avoid using illicit drugs.

Preventing drug use among youth works

Drug use prevention programmes are effective when they respond to the needs of a community, involve all the relevant sectors and are based on evidence; effective programmes should also incorporate strong monitoring and evaluation components. Such programmes are also cost effective. It has been shown that, for every dollar spent, good progragrammes for the prevention of drug use among youth can save up to 9 dollars! If other costs to society were to be counted, such as the costs resulting from crime, unemployment and ill-health, the cost effectiveness of good drug use prevention programmes is likely to be even greater.

UNODC has been working for many years to identify good practices with the help of youth and community-based organizations through two major projects, the Global Youth Network against Drug Abuse and the Global Initiative on Primary Prevention of Substance Abuse. With the help of other experts (academics, practitioners and representatives of United Nations agencies), we have identified what works and what does not work in prevention. You can find all the results of this work, including publications and training materials, as well as resources from many other organizations, by visiting the websites of the projects. We hope that our publications will be useful to youth and community-based organizations involved in prevention around the world.

 

 

Family skills training programmes in drug abuse prevention

Evidence-based family skills training programmes have been found to be the most effective way to prevent substance use among children and adolescents after nurse home-visitation programmes. These programmes target the whole family and offer skills-building for parents on monitoring and supervision of children's activities, communication and setting age appropriate limits. Children learn personal, social and

communication skills, and at the end of each session families come together to practice new skills as a family unit. These programmes improve  family functioning, organization, communication and interpersonal relationships and have been found to have multiple positive outcomes for children and adolescents including decreased alcohol and drug use, increased child attachment to school and academic performance, decreased child depression and aggression, increased child social competence and pro-social behaviour and decreased family conflict. In addition these programmes have been found to be cost-effective.

UNODC published Guidelines to impelement family skills training programmes for drug abuse prevention in March 2009. These guidelines contain evidence of effectiveness, principles of family skills training programmes, cultural adaptation guidelines, advice on how to recruit and retain families through the programmes, practical advice on training of staff, as well as information about monitoring and evaluating family skills training programmes.

In early 2010 UNODC is planning to publish a compendium of family skills training programmes that provide descriptions of  different family skills training programmes, their content, number of sessions, and other important information to consider when planning to implement such a programme.

UNODC has developed a global project to systematically adapt, implement, monitor and evaluate family skills training programmes in different regions.

 

 

Drug education based on life skills in schools

For a long time schools have been an important setting for UNODC to reach many children and adolescents with prevention activities. Evidence-based drug education based on life skills that offer personal, social, resistance and communication skills, normative education about how many of the peers in the adolescent age group actually have tried alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs (which typically is a lot less than adolescents think it is!), as well as information about the short-term effects of drugs through a series of session offered by trained teachers who use interactive techniques to engage the young people are very effective. It is important that schools have a written policy on alcohol, tobacco and substance use that covers all students and staff working in schools.

UNODC has published a guide SCHOOLS : School-based education for drug abuse prevention that aims at guiding schools to develop and implement school policy and drug education programmes as part of a health promotion curriculum.

 

Preventing drug use in the workplace

UNODC has many years of experience in working with employers and employees together to develop and implement policies against substance abuse in the workplace. Such policies are designed to promote the health of employees by preventing substance abuse and assisting those with a drug dependence problem. Moreover, through such policies employers can achieve substantial savings by reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity. For example, a successful UNODC project in Brazil led to a decrease of:

• 16 per cent in the number of smokers
• 12.5 per cent in the use of alcohol
• 28.7 per cent in the use of illicit drugs
• 10 per cent in employees taking sick-leave
• 30 per cent in employees being late
• 34 per cent in accidents in the workplace due to the abuse of substances