ure focuses on prevention of substance abuse among young people, beginning with attempts to circumvent the problem as early as elementary school.3
The social literature on adolescents is similarly alarmed. With increased attention given to the problems of stress, socialization, and conformity within the teenage world, substance abuse has taken on alarming proportions. Much of the literature focuses on treatment programs, and various methods to get adolescents back in school and providing help in dealing with their abuse.4
In both the United States and Europe, the greatest increase in alcohol abuse is among those under age 21.5 The United States, moreover, is a drug culture. Drugs are used in almost every household almost every day. For instance, coffee or tea is used to wake up in the morning, cigarettes throughout the day, soft drinks and candy during the day, and alcohol in the evening in order to relax. Young people are continually being bombarded with media and print advertising which sends them mixed messages about the use of these, and other, products.
The increasing number of young people who are swayed into alcohol use points to obvious dangers to health, coupled with an increasing likelihood of the possibility of chronic alcoholism later in life. Moreover, alcohol abuse among young people may also result in frequent trouble with the law, absenteeism from school, the inability to form positive relationships, and the predisposition to experimentation with other substances that may result in addiction.
Other serious problems result when the age of alcohol abuse continues to decline. Studies are now finding that even elementary school children are having problems with substance abuse, and not just in the inner city areas. Since alcohol is one of the most widely used recreational drugs, educators and psychologists have known that since 1972 heavy drinking among adolescents and young adults has taken on almost ep...